Announcing Official Release of Install Monitor

In previous blog entries we have talked about the issues of software rot and bloat which are common issues with software on Windows. Many times an uninstall programs will simply crash or fail to remove all the installed items. The user is often left to guess what will happen when they run the uninstaller. Likewise … Read more

The background on background programs(part 4)

A service is another type of background program. What are services? Services are processes that can run without a user being logged on. They support controls or messages like starting and stopping that are sent from the Service Control Manager. They can start automatically on system startup or manually by an application. What are services … Read more

The background on background programs (part 3)

Another type of background process is an update program. Some programs have the updater process run all the time, though it is only needed for checking for and installing updates. It makes little sense for a process that does nothing the majority of the time to be running all the time. Why is this so … Read more

The background on background programs (part 2)

Last time I talked about some of the reasons there are so many background programs. One category of background programs are used for quicker access to the user interface of a program. These programs usually place an icon in the notification area of the taskbar. Usually the purpose is to provide quicker access to the … Read more

The background on background programs

One of the characteristics of bloatware is unnecessary programs running in the background. In the example last time Application Foo had five programs running and all you needed it for was viewing widgets. Many times these background programs are unnecessary or should be optional. They generally fall into a few categories like providing easier user-interface … Read more