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Egg timer omnipresent
Thread poster: Oliver Pekelharing
Oliver Pekelharing
Oliver Pekelharing  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 07:35
Dutch to English
Jan 20, 2012

Hullo,

I'm using Windows 7 home premium 64 bit on a Dell laptop with a 2.3ghz intel dual-core processor and 8mb ram.

Lately I've noticed that the egg timer symbol (next to or instead of the mouse arrow) seems to hang around a lot, while I am not actually carrying out tasks. I've not actually experienced any delay, but it is mildly irritating. Now I realise that there's lots of stuff going on in the background, but I don't recall that that resulted in the egg timer poppi... See more
Hullo,

I'm using Windows 7 home premium 64 bit on a Dell laptop with a 2.3ghz intel dual-core processor and 8mb ram.

Lately I've noticed that the egg timer symbol (next to or instead of the mouse arrow) seems to hang around a lot, while I am not actually carrying out tasks. I've not actually experienced any delay, but it is mildly irritating. Now I realise that there's lots of stuff going on in the background, but I don't recall that that resulted in the egg timer popping up all the time in the past. The cpu monitor doesn't report any unusual activity, but I do see that there are 69 processes active in the task manager. Is that a lot?

Thanks,

Olly ▲ Collapse
 
Shouguang Cao
Shouguang Cao  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 13:35
English to Chinese
+ ...
Too many programs running on startup Jan 20, 2012

Laptop manufacturers like to add lots of programs to Windows startup. Try this:

1. Click the start button on bottom left of the screen.
2. Type "msconfig" in the search field and press Enter to run System Configuration.
3. Go to "Startup" tab and uncheck those items you are sure that are useless. You can google those items to find out what they are.

Dallas
 
Kevin Clayton, PhD
Kevin Clayton, PhD
Spain
Local time: 07:35
Member (2012)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Not that many processes... Jan 20, 2012

Hey Olly

I have largely the same setup (except it's a Packard Bell laptop with only 4 gb of RAM) and currently I have 80 processes running according to Task Manager. Everything is running smoothly.

Can you run a diagnostic on your hard drive or RAM? For hard drives you should be able to find one specific for your own drive. My previous disk drive gradually failed during the year and one of the first signs, if I recall correctly, was a general slow-down, both in startin... See more
Hey Olly

I have largely the same setup (except it's a Packard Bell laptop with only 4 gb of RAM) and currently I have 80 processes running according to Task Manager. Everything is running smoothly.

Can you run a diagnostic on your hard drive or RAM? For hard drives you should be able to find one specific for your own drive. My previous disk drive gradually failed during the year and one of the first signs, if I recall correctly, was a general slow-down, both in starting up and in accessing the drive. The Western Digital diagnostic failed one of the first tests with the warning that the hard drive would soon fail completely. At least I had enough time to backup everything (although the service from Packard Bell was less than satisfactory). For RAM on my previous laptop I used Memtest86 that showed that one of the chips was broken: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/gr/memtest86.htm

Hope that helps!

Kevin

p.s. not a paying member so this might take a while to be approved. ▲ Collapse
 
Oliver Pekelharing
Oliver Pekelharing  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 07:35
Dutch to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks all Jan 21, 2012

I think I found the culprit(s): HP printer programmes running in the background. Apparently a common issue with HP.

Thanks for your advice.
 
Kevin Clayton, PhD
Kevin Clayton, PhD
Spain
Local time: 07:35
Member (2012)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Easily solved then! Jan 21, 2012

I actually installed HP printer software on my laptop this week - purely to find out how much ink was left in my flatmate's printer - and I was amazed at how many programs it installed. I removed it from the list of startup programs as none were necessary.

Anyway, I'm glad it's sorted out.
 


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