Phantom programmes running?

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JBR

JBR

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I have found recently that when I open Task Manager there seem to be a number of programmes running. Just now:
- Calculator
- Films & TV
- Photos
- Settings
although sometimes there are more. This happens all the time now.

The strange thing is that the only thing running seems to be Chrome (which I am using now).

I have used Calculator and Photos and, I think Settings (although I'm not sure what 'Films & TV' might be) earlier this evening, but definitely closed those earlier.

So why does Task Manager still show them as running?
 
screen shot? are they actually consuming processor cycles or just holding memory.
 
Windows 8.1/10? These are apps and closing them by either switching away or by dragging to the bottom right merely puts the program into suspend mode ready to be launched again (for speed). If you computer starts to get low on memory, it will automatically close those suspended apps so there shouldn't be much to worry about. I have no idea if you can disable this feature or any aspect of how it works though so you might need to google for that.
 
Thank you both.

I cannot supply a screen shot at the moment because, having deleted the entries in Task Manager a couple of times, they are no longer shown. Perhaps tomorrow!

Sorry, I should have said it's Windows 10. Yes, as I mentioned, I have deleted them but, like poltergeists, they come back! Still I can see from your comment that it's probably not something I should be worried about and, to be honest, I haven't really noticed any compromising of speed, etc.

Following advice from elsewhere (another forum) I have turned off all apps listed in Settings/Background apps, which seemed to work initially but then the buggers were back again later.

Never had these problems in Windows 7!
 
JBR said:
, I have deleted them but, like poltergeists, they come back!
Click to expand...
This is not a problem - it's just the operating system doing what it was designed to do.

Contrary to what many people believe, 100% of the memory in a computer is there to be used.
Keeping large amounts of it empty is a total waste, as if not used, there would be no point in having it.
Attempting to clear memory or override what the OS is doing will usually result in poor performance and other problems.

If you really want the memory to be empty/unused, them remove it from the machine and place it on a shelf where it will remain unused for ever.
 
flameport said:
This is not a problem - it's just the operating system doing what it was designed to do.

Contrary to what many people believe, 100% of the memory in a computer is there to be used.
Keeping large amounts of it empty is a total waste, as if not used, there would be no point in having it.
Attempting to clear memory or override what the OS is doing will usually result in poor performance and other problems.

If you really want the memory to be empty/unused, them remove it from the machine and place it on a shelf where it will remain unused for ever.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
I was concerned that in having these programmes running constantly in the background it would use up resources and compromise speed, although to be fair I hadn't noticed any loss of speed.

What, then, is the advantage of having these programmes running? As I said, they seem to make no difference so are they necessary?
 
The advantage is that memory if much faster than disk, so opening a particular program is significantly faster if it is already in memory. Same applies to data as well, frequently accessed data can be kept in memory rather than reading from disk every time.
 
flameport said:
The advantage is that memory if much faster than disk, so opening a particular program is significantly faster if it is already in memory. Same applies to data as well, frequently accessed data can be kept in memory rather than reading from disk every time.
Click to expand...
Yes, I can appreciate that, although I haven't in all honesty noticed any speed difference. Anyway, thank you for your advice and I'll leave things as they are. The fact that they appear in Task Manager doesn't bother me now I know it's quite normal.
 
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