Saving CPU time on a PC

Hauptwerk, even more than some other programs, needs all of the CPU power and RAM that it can get. I therefore checked to see what processes were running in my machine, and how much time and space they occupied.

As I am using Vista (boo) I used > run > msconfig and the startup tab to find what services were started when the machine was booted. There were several programs which loaded at start time so that they were already loaded in case they were required, and I removed them from the list, as I could start them myself if and when I needed them.

Using the Task Manager and Performance showed that when the machine was idle, more than 30% of the CPU capacity was taken up by two processes. Processes showed that agent.exe and isuspm.exe were the culprits. It’s not sufficient to stop one of these running; if only one is killed the other restores it to life. When I had used msconfig and removed these from the programs loaded at start time the CPU when the machine was idle dropped from about 30% to 3%.

So, its a clear recommendation to users of Hauptwerk to check to see if these processes are running, and, if so, to gain another 30% of the CPU power, apparently for zero cost.

Now, a possibly OT question – what problems are likely to arise from disabling these processes?

It seems that those two programs are something to do with InstallShield and other people have also had problems with them soaking up a lot of CPU time. At the bottom of this webpage:
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/How-do-i ... 78755.html
there's a post by jimmy2012 with info about how to stop those programs starting up again - but use at your own risk.

Both those items are in my startup tab too (Win XP) but I've not had any problems with them so far.

Pete