List of the essential processes that Windows XP needs to run.

Date: 2009.04.22 | Category: Windows XP | Tags:

Here is a list of the essential processes that Windows XP needs to run correctly. You can view these in the Task Manager. To open this click Start – Run type in taskmgr and click Ok. Click on the Processes tab to view the running processes.To end a task select it and choose “End Process”.

System Idle Process
explorer.exe
taskmgr.exe
spoolsv.exe
lsass.exe
csrss.exe
smss.exe
winlogon.exe
services.exe
svchost.exe – There will be a few of these, read below for more information on this.

By shutting down anything other than these processes, XP should operate just fine, however if any of these processes are shutdown, Windows will start to become unstable or unusable.

On most computers there will be multiple instances of svchost.exe, these control various connections on your computer whether its to the Internet or within a LAN. It is usually safe to switch off some of these, however it’s not easy to determine which ones, I recommend Process Explorer from Sysinternals if you need to start digging into these processes. I will be posting an in-depth guide to using Process Explorer soon.