Background Might Be Obscuring the Foreground
Q I have a question about programs running in the background. Recently, my DSL started to hang up every five minutes. When the technician arrived, he told me I had too many programs running in the background. He did the Ctrl-Alt-Del thing, which displayed the pop-up window showing many, many items. We deleted those that I knew I didn’t need, programs I could identify. But now I’m wondering just what all those other programs are. What do they do? Can any of them be safely deleted from the start-up? Here’s what’s on my list: Explorer, Iowatch, Stimon, Fbdirect, Rundll, Atitask, Systray, Aticwd32, Imgicon, Msgloop and Msg32.
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A We know that Iowatch is a little doodad that works with your Iomega drive, such as a Zip drive. The Ati items are related to your video card. Stimon is a tool installed on Windows 98 and Windows Me systems when you connect a scanner to the universal serial bus port. And you’ve got your parallel port covered too--that’s what Fbdirect does. Imgicon is yet another bit of Iomega drive flotsam. There are lots of little stray programs running in the background.
The only thing you don’t want to turn off is Explorer, which you can think of as your Windows operating system. We also like to keep Systray because we like that little list of icons down on the lower right with the clock.
If you hardly ever use your Iomega drive, don’t load that stuff up every time you boot. To see what’s safe to turn off and what’s not, open that box you get by hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del once, and kill programs individually. Then, test your computer to make sure everything still works properly.
Then, you can set up your system so that each time your computer boots up, it’ll only load the stuff you need to work. On modern versions of Windows, there’s a little tool called the System Configuration Utility, which you also can use. A good free utility is Start-up Cop. You can check it out at https://www.zdnet.com/downloads/stories/info/0,10615,77594,00.html.
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Q I am having problems with my new DSL/Verizon mail service. It sounds easy to fix, but the support team wants to charge me $35. The problem is all my incoming mail to my new Outlook Express mailbox goes to the junk folder instead of incoming mail folder. I tried to change it myself with no luck. Can you help me?
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A This sounds like a filter issue. Open Outlook Express, and click on the Tools menu (that’s the fourth item from the left along the top), then click on Message Rules followed by Mail.
You’ll find that a rule has been created that tosses all mail in your junk folder. Deleting or modifying the rule should solve the problem.
Dave Wilson is The Times’ personal technology columnist. Submit questions to Tech Q&A; at techtimes@latimes.com.
