What's that process? (Windoze)

[Fallen Angel]

Okay, I admit it. I've finally found something useful from M$ (that is if you're stuck with using their OS). 

I've had recent problems with 100% CPU usage and Firefox behaving badly, which were thankfully cured by a clean reinstall of FF, including my profile. CPU and memory usage have now returned to normal levels, and although I'm still getting occasional 100% CPU usage spikes, they're thankfully not causing everything to grind to a standstill as the badly behaved FF was doing, but thanks to Process Explorer posted by some helpful soul on the Mozillazine forums, I've now discovered these occasional spikes are caused by my AV software. 

As well as letting you put your cursor on a spike in the Process Explorer's CPU usage window and see exactly what process/program is using your CPU, it also gives you slightly more in the way of a description of what each process is, and right clicking on an entry in the list brings up a load more info on what the process is and what resources it's using.

<edit>Also, under "Options," you can replace Task Manager with it, so when you right-click the task/tray bar and click "Task Manager," Process Explorer opens in its place. When Process Explorer's minimised, putting your cursor over a spike in the CPU usage window in the tray will identify what's causing the spike.  </edit>

[Giomanach]

Orrrr......get a decent PC that doesnt bodge up like that :P

[Fallen Angel]

Do not start Gio. I am not in the mood. 

Thanks to Process Explorer the problem's been tracked down to something in my AV software, which has now been disabled and a free trial of another one installed  until I can get their idiot tech support to bother to respond to my support request as to what to do about it.

[Giomanach]

What AV you using? If you say Norton, I'm coming over to give ya brain a good beatin for even thinking about installing it.

[Fallen Angel]

  Do I look like I'm stupid enough to use Norton? On second thoughts, don't answer that. I'll just send Caz round to give you a slap.

It's Bitdefender. AVG got ditched earlier this year after causing me huge problems, so I switched to BiitDefender after a couple of people recommended it, the trial of it went okay, and it's been playing nice up until recently, but after Boxing Day when I spent most of the day rebooting I decided enough was enough.

[Caz]

Try Nod32. Small footprint and doesn't interfere unless you tell it to - and free month's trial
Pretty hard to give him a slap these days...

[Fallen Angel]

Yep, NOD32's the one I installed the trial of (I dug around a little to check cos I remembered that you'd recommended one recently). Still no word from BitDefender's tech support, though I suppose what with Xmas and everything it may be a while. *sigh*

At the moment I'm running BitDefender (it's the internet security version) with the AV component switched off because of the firewall, and using Nod32 for AV. I really don't want to change at the moment if I can help it though because I've still got a fair while to run on my licence, and using one thing for firewall and another  for AV, it gets kind of expensive with the licences for two machines. I have to say though, Nod32 seems very nice and just sits there nice and quietly. 

[Caz]

I use the free version of Kerio for the firewall and it works well with Nod32.