why must we restart the system

I never understood why keeping your computer on endlessly is so important to anyone. I have not read any evedence either way that turning off your computer is bad or leaving it on is bad.

So I guess my question is, why not?

Some argue that cold cycling is a strain on moving components...more so than constant running.....or why a taxi gets more miles out of an engine than the weekend driver does...

Here is an article that points out the pros and cons of both "schools of thought"

http://www.pcguide.com/care/care/gen/powerOnOff-c.html

enjoy

What is the big deal about rebooting anyway? I don't think its about saving power, as reboot only shuts the power off temporarily. Otherwise I find the question here rather vague. What is causing you to need to reboot? If you are using WinXP, it can run as described without rebooting. However older windows generally need rebooting after a day of use, at least in my experience.
I keep mine running constantly, but do have it go into standby when not in use. I have WB, DX, and OD+ running as well as other programs. As such, I do still reboot from time to time. Usually when a program requires it, but sometimes just to clear things up and start fresh again. It is, however, generally not needed in WinXP.

The last few times I have updated Windowblinds to the newer versions, I have been prompted to reboot my system. I believe there was one update which did not require this.

The reason I ask this question is that I had a bunch of stuff open and I was in the middle of some code. I just took a break to visit my favorite web-site to see if there were any updates. I hate running in classic mode windows (that's why I have WB). I just didn't want to have to reboot my system to get my windows skinned again.

There was a discussion about this some time ago and it was stated at that time that if the user unloaded windowblinds and etc a reboot would not be required. I was just curious. It has nothing to do with 'clearing the system' or anything else like that. Usually you reboot after an update to clear out any leftover processes or dll's or whatever. I had nothing running which would have had anything to do with WB so I was curious why I had to reboot my system.

werewolf,

If you just want to update your WB but not necessarily have the newest changes applied immediately don't bother shutting WB down just update it. It will tell you to reboot, just hit the cancel button and go on your merry way until you are at a point that you can reboot. I do this all the time and never have any issues.

As far as why you are prompted to reboot, it may be the installer, or there may have been a locked file. Unloading WB is a start but did you make sure the WB process was killed? Also, since WB is integrated pretty tightly into Windows there may have been a file that XP didn't release when you unloaded WB. Sometimes if you aren't tight on resources the OS may choose to keep some libraries loaded in case you use that program again to save on start time the next time round.. Anyway, to answer you question there really is no definite answer, all you can do is try to kill as many processes as you can to unload everything but nothing is guaranteed in the WIndows world where system and applications are tied so closely together. Now, if MS ever decided to separate the OS and application layers ala NIX OSes we wouldn't see these problems, but I digress..

HTH,

A little tip: after you have unloaded WB, rename wbload.exe and wblind.dll before updateing. That should keep you from haveing to reboot. After updateing restart WB.

The technical reason is that even when you've "unloaded" WindowBlinds, it may have to hang around to prop things up. As a programmer you may be aware of how these sort of things tend to work - if WindowBlinds intercepts messages from X before handing them on, and then Y intercepts messages from WindowBlinds before handing them on, if WindowBlinds disappears messages won't be able to get from Y to X and everything will blow up.

At least that's one potential reason. There are others. If you want you could use something like Process Explorer to see what's holding on to wblind.dll (or associated files) and kill it off, then rename the file manually and restart WB.

Why do I need to reboot?

First of all, I wouldn't update if I were in the middle of something else. I would close any open programs before updating. This way one can minimize possible conflicts during the updating process. The reason it is neccessary to reboot is because windows sometimes holds unto dll's and they can't be properly updated until they are released by the operating sysytem. So, a reboot is required to release them.

Secondly, you seem to know the proper procedure for updating. It is basically the same procedure for the windows update website. Be safe, follow the proper procedure.

I just throw an old boot at my computer.. is that the same thing? hehe...

lol..sometimes it feels like the same thing doesn't it.

Thanks to all who replied. I agree, I suppose, with everything everyone said again. I know I shouldn't update in the middle of things, but I needed a break. I do know that a process can get hung up. I did kill all stardock related processes, but it really doesn't matter. I know how I should have done it. I was tired and hungry and I just needed to vent. Sorry

So if your computer is running slow, what are the processes you can turn off or 'kill' that will, in a way, restart the system?

Me, I don't have a top of the line (or even middle of the line) system. After 24 or 48 hours the best thing I have seen to do is reboot (not completly a turn off and leave off).

If I know what processes to turn off, maybe things will be better for my system and me using it. Plus, how many handles for any program is too much? What about threads? How to do a memory dump properly?

What site would be best to discuss thit at or look up data on it?

Plus, what is wrong with putting a computer in hibernation? Turn your computer off, turn it back on and your ststem is back to the way you have set it up when you turned it off.



So many questions... and Google is only helping a little...

I think Frogboy said that 11,000 handles is at the leading edge of what is 'too much.'

I can say from experience that 99,999 is definitely too much.
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I think Frogboy said that 11,000 handles is at the leading edge of what is 'too much.'

I just happen to have a copy of the thread you're referring to.....

Here is a short sample:

Any time something hangs, you can hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc to bring up the task list. Often times, what is hung won't report itself as being hung. Here are common process names you can kill to get your desktop back to normal:

IEXPLORE.EXE (IE)
explorer.exe (Explorer)
msimn.exe (Outlook Express)

Pretty much these 3 are the ones that tend to cause problems.

Then there's the overall performance. Make sure nothing is eating up your CPU. If you're at 100% CPU (click on the performance tab) then find out what is doing that. Back at the processes tab you can sort by CPU usage by clicking on the "CPU" header. Find out what's eating all your CPU and kill it.

Next comes general stability. There are 3 things that can cause Windows XP to get flakey:
1) Too much memory used will make the system sluggish
2) Too many GDI objects will eventually make the system very slow and cause buttons and such not to show up
3) Too many handles will do the same thing as #2.

But how to find this out? On the processes page go to the view menu item an choose "select columns". Look for GDI objects and handles. Then start sorting by them. Anything using more than 1000 of these things is probably bad news. You may want to add user objects while you're at it and see if anything is sucking them up.

Look also at how much VM size things are using. For instance, as I type this Explorer is using 95 MEGABYTES of VM. Now if I wasn't using the Task manager I wouldn't think anything of it other than my system be slower than it should (in fairness, I run my system for weeks at a time so things build up). So I'll be killing explorer to refresh it back. Incidentally it was also using over 3000 GDI objects and 2500 user objects and 2000 handles. So it was definitely a drain on my system.

You can reload explorer by going to file New task and type in "explorer" and it will restart it. Now it's only using 11 megs of VM and 228 GDI objects and my system is fast again.

The key though is to use Ctrl-Shift-Esc rather than Ctrl-Alt-Del to get to the task list where you can perform recovery techniques to avoid having to logoff or reboot.

Thanks Koasati. That's the article. I have a question: I have a svchost which is at 1,161 handles. I used tasklist /svc in cmd.exe to see what that is doing and it seems to be doing everyhing

svchost.exe 968 AudioSrv, Browser, CryptSvc, Dhcp,
EventSystem, helpsvc, lanmanserver,
lanmanworkstation, Netman, Nla, RasMan,
SENS, SharedAccess, ShellHWDetection,
srservice, TapiSrv, Themes, winmgmt, wscsvc,
wuauserv

How the heck can I spread this out a little. I've got SP2 and .net 1.1 SP1 and I run in Astonshell. I've got a dsl router which connects 3 other boxes in the house. I would truly appreciate any help here.

Thanks.

Even if they were all in seperate svchosts they would still use the same amount of handles. Possibly more due to the extra svchosts.
Svchost looks after multiple services so it is highly likely to be over 1000 and to my understanding doesn't come under the category of a rogue process that is leaking. What you describe is perfectly normal. My largest svchost has 1523 handles and I have no ill effects.

That is the one I have been looking for. I couldn't come up with the right combination of words to get at it.

And looking up Frogboy only gave me a mess load of news article to sort through (and each time missing the article)

What I would want is a way to know what the hell all these processes are and if they are legit or not.

Next comes general stability. There are 3 things that can cause Windows XP to get flakey: 1) Too much memory used will make the system sluggish

This is why there has got to be a way to do a memory dump. why is my system using 600MB of VM when I have 2 programs running and niether one is taking any where near that much memory.

Since I on have 256 of RAM, it ends up slowing down the system and hard drive. I know some say there is no such thing as XP not using all available memory but come on!

Plus, I have the strange feeling that if I buy more memory I'll still end up with the same problem. How do you get the memory back to the start up usage when no program is exaclty using the memory? XP is just storing remnants of programs in there for save keeping and faster start up... not faster for me!


I take it all back, I just opend a new tab that allows me to see just how much vertual memory any program is using. Internet Explorer might be at 5mb but its virtual memory is at 25. Explorer the shell is at 17MB virtual with 456 GDI Objects.
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Since I on have 256 of RAM

256MB of Ram is not much when you are using programs like DesktopX. I would recommend at least 1GB of Ram. My system uses 350MB regularly. Since, I have 1GB, I don't worry about it. But, if I had 512MB of Ram, then I would be concerned. I have reduced services too. It seems that with 1GB of Ram, I never fall below 500MB free. It is that extra 512 that keeps me in the green.

More memory is always a good thing!
You need at least 512 megs of RAM just to run Windows XP efficiently, never mind the programs you have installed.
Installing more RAM is the single most important move you could make to improve the performance of your current configuration.

More memory is always a good thing!
You need at least 512 megs of RAM just to run Windows XP efficiently, never mind the programs you have installed.
Installing more RAM is the single most important move you could make to improve the performance of your current configuration.

Listen to Jam....and for those with short attention spans they can listen to him twice....

My old computer have a insane overkill of RAM. It has 1.5 GB ram.

I had a great deal with 512 mb sticks ( 50 bucks each ) then.

My laptop ( still in shop ) has 1 GB ram.
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Good for you XX..
there is no such thing as too much RAM in my opinion.
If you can afford to add it, you will never regret doing so!