What happens when I terminate most processes running on the computer?

First, it's very difficult to determine which processes are supposed to be there and which aren't. Some processes are obvious, others are not. Terminating the wrong one can crash the machine.

Second, if you "terminate" the processes, they'll try to come back up the next restart, but depending on what happened (or didn't happen) when you terminated them, they might not make it. That can be good or bad. A safer way to play with startup processes is to use msconfig to keep them from starting on a reboot without actually killing them.

1. In XP, click on the Start->Run menu item. In Vista, click the Windows button.

2. In the Run text box, type in msconfig, then press Enter.

3. In MsConfig, click the Startup tab.

4. Uncheck the checkboxes next to the tasks you want to keep from starting. These won't be deleted from the list, so you can re-check them later on if you want to restore them.

5. Click OK.

6. Accept the reboot option.

After the reboot, you'll get a message about your configuration having changed. In fact, if you just click OK, you'll get this message after every reboot, however, if you click the checkbox before clicking OK, the message won't come up again unless and until you make another msconfig change.

Be careful, and good luck.

Well when you end something on Task Manager, you are of course stopping that program from running. The process list is basically a list of programs that the computer is running currently. Don't worry, if you end a process that is important, it isn't permanent. Just restart the program that belongs to the process you stopped. Honestly, ending processes won't do much to make your computer faster. Because as soon as you turn off the PC and start it again, they will be there again. I'm guessing that you have many startup programs (Programs that always start when the computer does e.i Yahoo messenger, AIM, etc...) If you want your computer to run faster, run a virus scan, spyware scan, delete any unused programs, and make sure you disable the programs that you don't use, that startup with the computer. Oh and Yahoo doesn't have a browser, so im guessing that you must either use Yahoo! Messenger or you have the Yahoo toolbar. If you close it and have the first, it will close Yahoo Messenger, if you close the latter, you can still run your browser, but your toolbar won't be there. I'm giving as much detail as I can because to get rid of processes, you need to know exactly what each one does and which ones you cant end. Good luck though.

Some applications may not work, and all the icons you see in your system tray by the clock will disappear most likely. You can't end any system critical processes, and when you reboot the processes will all restart again. To permanently disable them from startup, go to a Run command and type "msconfig" - click the startup tab, and uncheck everything you don't want to start when the computer turns on.

It stops running until you restart the computer. But becareful, as a lot of them are system running processes and those should never be terminated.

If you restart your computer, every process in the startup folder will be re-established once the system boots up. So yes, everything that ought to be there will still be there, along with any other programs that are set to run on start-up.

Yes you terminate them only for the session.When you restart they'll run again.If you want to permanently disable a service go to administrator tools/services and disable the service there

They will come back when you restart your computer. If you start terminating everything your computer might stop working temporarily.

Some of them will come back when you restart and some will come back when you open some programs or do something like printing.

You could crash the harddrive.

some of them won't return, some do.

such as the explorer process, when you terminate that one, the taskbar disappears.

but if you restart it, it comes back.

Don't mess with them unless you know exactly what they are doing. Look here for what these processes are doing and which one you need.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/strangeservice.htm