Whic of these can I quit?

[Smileyguy]

Hi guys,

I felt that my 1.33Ghz 12' powerbook was running a bit sluggish this morning, so I opened Activity Monitor, and there did indeed seem to be a lot running. Now I was able to delete a few things but there's a lot of other stuff that I'm not sure if it's safe to close, such as:

Security Agent
AppleSpell
HP IO Classic Proxy (presumably something related to my printer, but does it need to be open?)
HP Event Handler (same as above)
System Events
SystemUIServer
pbs
loginwindow
ATSSServer
WindowServer

I'm tempted to delete them all. What can and can't I delete?

Thanks,

SG

 

[mad jew]

Well don't delete them. You can stop some of them although I wouldn't personally do that to any but the HP processes. Check your StartupItems fodler in the Library and also your Login Items in System Preferences to remove anything you don't want to automatically start. The remaining processes are generally part of the system and should be left alone.

 

[irishgrizzly]

None of them! I'd leave them all alone, they're related to the OS and need to be running. If your systems running slow their are plenty of things you can do to speed it up, like;

• Run Software Update
• Restart – if you being leaving the running for months
• Repair Permissions
• Use a system cleaner like onyX
• Clean space off your HD (esp if you have less than 1GB free)
• Delete any programs that you no longer use
• Add more RAM

 

[robbieduncan]

See my annotations in the list below:

Security Agent: Required by the security and authentication services. If you delete this your Mac won't work.
AppleSpell: Required for spell checking in text boxes/fields. If you delete this your Mac might not work.
HP IO Classic Proxy (presumably something related to my printer, but does it need to be open?)
HP Event Handler (same as above)
System Events: Required for system wide events. If you delete this your Mac won't work.
SystemUIServer: Required for the User Interface elements on your Mac. If you delete this your Mac won't work
pbs: pasteboardserver: If you delete this you will not be able to copy/paste. And your Mac might not work.
loginwindow: Required to let you log in (automatic or via the login window). If you delete this your Mac won't work
ATSSServer: Apple Type Services Server. Required to show any text. If you delete this your Mac won't work
WindowServer: Required to show, manage and move windows. If you delete this your Mac won't work

Get the idea?

 

[Smileyguy]

Thanks guys, I get the picture.