False Program Instances appearing in Program Manager

Hi:
I think I have done my homework on this one. I have done a general search
and I have done a google groups search and I can't find anything quite like
this. Here we go.

Additional instances of programs (usually the first program I use after
startup) are appearing in the program manager (when I open it with
cnt/alt/del). They do NOTshow up in the taskbar or system tray and therefore
can not be closed in the usual fashion. These false instances DO NOT show up
when using process explorer either.They aren't causing any real problem
except that I think they consume resources. I think this problem has been
around for a long time and I have just recently paid attention to it.
Generally when resources get low I have just restarted the computer and gone
from there.

When I try to shut down the false instance (usually the top one on the
program manager list) using cnt/alt/del I usually get a "Shut Down Windows"
window, sometines I get a window saying that I "have elected to close a
toolbar". Whichever window I get I choose "cancel". The message goes away
and then a few seconds later I get a "program is not responding, do you wish
to close the program?" window (naming the false program instance)" I tell
it to close the program, and things seem normal again.

Now, a couple weird things happen when I close that false instance;
a) The number of tasks running in process explorer DOES NOT CHANGE, however
they are rearranged
b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on the
process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under "Explorer"
anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.
c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon disapppears
from the system tray.

Other than this "false program instance" problem and the perceived vanishing
resources the computer runs great.

Ok, so what have I done to try to isolate this? All of the things listed
below have NOT shown anything unusual as a result of running them and the
weird condition has persisted.
a) I regularly run scandisk. Every onece in a while (after weeks of use) an
error will show up in scandisk and it is easily fixed, and there are no bad
sectors.
b) I periodically run defrag
c) I have done a system restore recently for a different problem, but I
think this problem has been around for many months and it is not practical
to "restore it away".
..d) I have done a disk cleanup, and I have run; Internet Cleanup, X-Cleaner
and CC_Clean
e) I have run AVG Virus Scan, AdAware, SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster
f) I have even run Belarc Advisor to make sure that one of my updates didn't
get trashed.

As mentioned all of the above have not returned any unusual results.

Has anybody ever seen anything like this? When I searched I looked for
things like "program is not responding", "additional program instances".
"false program instances" and I also added the term "program manager" or
"system manager". I looked for variations of all of this. I learned a lot,
but I never found anything quite like this.

Any ideas? There is a lot of stuff on this machine and the thought of
reinstalling it is daunting. If it got to be a real nusiance, it might be
more reasonable to replace the machine.

Thanks, John

Additional/multiple instances of applications is quite normal, especially
Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe).

The only applications consuming resources are those that appear in process
explorer which may not/does not always show multiple instances of a
running process since sometimes multiple instances are just the same
process being accessed from a different entry point.

What does MSInfo | Software Environment | Running Tasks have to say here?

b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.

All that has happened is that explorer.exe has stopped and restarted.

c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

All perfectly normal. If explorer.exe crashes or restarts for some reason
(and there can be many) many applications do not show in the system tray
area when explorer restarts. Such programs include, in XP for example,
Microsoft's Task Manager.

Basically I do not believe you have any sort of problem.
--
Mike Maltby



John wrote:

Hi:
I think I have done my homework on this one. I have done a general
search and I have done a google groups search and I can't find
anything quite like this. Here we go.

Additional instances of programs (usually the first program I use
after startup) are appearing in the program manager (when I open it
with cnt/alt/del). They do NOTshow up in the taskbar or system tray
and therefore can not be closed in the usual fashion. These false
instances DO NOT show up when using process explorer either.They
aren't causing any real problem except that I think they consume
resources. I think this problem has been around for a long time and
I have just recently paid attention to it. Generally when resources
get low I have just restarted the computer and gone from there.

When I try to shut down the false instance (usually the top one on the
program manager list) using cnt/alt/del I usually get a "Shut Down
Windows" window, sometines I get a window saying that I "have elected
to close a toolbar". Whichever window I get I choose "cancel". The
message goes away and then a few seconds later I get a "program is
not responding, do you wish to close the program?" window (naming the
false program instance)" I tell it to close the program, and things
seem normal again.

Now, a couple weird things happen when I close that false instance;
a) The number of tasks running in process explorer DOES NOT CHANGE,
however they are rearranged
b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.
c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

Other than this "false program instance" problem and the perceived
vanishing resources the computer runs great.

Ok, so what have I done to try to isolate this? All of the things
listed below have NOT shown anything unusual as a result of running
them and the weird condition has persisted.
a) I regularly run scandisk. Every onece in a while (after weeks of
use) an error will show up in scandisk and it is easily fixed, and
there are no bad sectors.
b) I periodically run defrag
c) I have done a system restore recently for a different problem, but
I think this problem has been around for many months and it is not
practical to "restore it away".
.d) I have done a disk cleanup, and I have run; Internet Cleanup,
X-Cleaner and CC_Clean
e) I have run AVG Virus Scan, AdAware, SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster
f) I have even run Belarc Advisor to make sure that one of my updates
didn't get trashed.

As mentioned all of the above have not returned any unusual results.

Has anybody ever seen anything like this? When I searched I looked for
things like "program is not responding", "additional program
instances". "false program instances" and I also added the term
"program manager" or "system manager". I looked for variations of
all of this. I learned a lot, but I never found anything quite like
this.

Any ideas? There is a lot of stuff on this machine and the thought of
reinstalling it is daunting. If it got to be a real nusiance, it
might be more reasonable to replace the machine.

Thanks, John

Mike:
I shut down everything in the task bar and system tray to get rid of all of
the clutter in MSInfo and then took a shot with MSInfo and saved it I then
shut down the extra application instance (Outlook this time) using the
program manager, refreshed MSInfo and took another shot with MSInfo. The
two shots were identical, nothing changed in MSInfo after I shut down the
second program instance. I have included one of these shots as an
attachment.

I wonder why shutting down the false application causes Explorer to crash.
Maybe it is looking for something that isn't there, and it doesn't know how
to handle it.

It is strange, this computer went for a couple hours and a couple restarts
this time before the "false" application showed up.

Do you see anything odd in the tasks that are running?

It is a nice day outside, maybe I should go enjoy it and write this thing
off as another one of those amazing secrets of science.

Thanks again, John


"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Additional/multiple instances of applications is quite normal, especially
Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe).

The only applications consuming resources are those that appear in process
explorer which may not/does not always show multiple instances of a
running process since sometimes multiple instances are just the same
process being accessed from a different entry point.

What does MSInfo | Software Environment | Running Tasks have to say here?

b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.

All that has happened is that explorer.exe has stopped and restarted.

c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

All perfectly normal. If explorer.exe crashes or restarts for some reason
(and there can be many) many applications do not show in the system tray
area when explorer restarts. Such programs include, in XP for example,
Microsoft's Task Manager.

Basically I do not believe you have any sort of problem.
--
Mike Maltby



John wrote:

Hi:
I think I have done my homework on this one. I have done a general
search and I have done a google groups search and I can't find
anything quite like this. Here we go.

Additional instances of programs (usually the first program I use
after startup) are appearing in the program manager (when I open it
with cnt/alt/del). They do NOTshow up in the taskbar or system tray
and therefore can not be closed in the usual fashion. These false
instances DO NOT show up when using process explorer either.They
aren't causing any real problem except that I think they consume
resources. I think this problem has been around for a long time and
I have just recently paid attention to it. Generally when resources
get low I have just restarted the computer and gone from there.

When I try to shut down the false instance (usually the top one on the
program manager list) using cnt/alt/del I usually get a "Shut Down
Windows" window, sometines I get a window saying that I "have elected
to close a toolbar". Whichever window I get I choose "cancel". The
message goes away and then a few seconds later I get a "program is
not responding, do you wish to close the program?" window (naming the
false program instance)" I tell it to close the program, and things
seem normal again.

Now, a couple weird things happen when I close that false instance;
a) The number of tasks running in process explorer DOES NOT CHANGE,
however they are rearranged
b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.
c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

Other than this "false program instance" problem and the perceived
vanishing resources the computer runs great.

Ok, so what have I done to try to isolate this? All of the things
listed below have NOT shown anything unusual as a result of running
them and the weird condition has persisted.
a) I regularly run scandisk. Every onece in a while (after weeks of
use) an error will show up in scandisk and it is easily fixed, and
there are no bad sectors.
b) I periodically run defrag
c) I have done a system restore recently for a different problem, but
I think this problem has been around for many months and it is not
practical to "restore it away".
.d) I have done a disk cleanup, and I have run; Internet Cleanup,
X-Cleaner and CC_Clean
e) I have run AVG Virus Scan, AdAware, SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster
f) I have even run Belarc Advisor to make sure that one of my updates
didn't get trashed.

As mentioned all of the above have not returned any unusual results.

Has anybody ever seen anything like this? When I searched I looked for
things like "program is not responding", "additional program
instances". "false program instances" and I also added the term
"program manager" or "system manager". I looked for variations of
all of this. I learned a lot, but I never found anything quite like
this.

Any ideas? There is a lot of stuff on this machine and the thought of
reinstalling it is daunting. If it got to be a real nusiance, it
might be more reasonable to replace the machine.

Thanks, John

Yoiu may have better luck with a better process viewer, rather than the
native one. If you are so inclined, check out Process Explorer, free, from
www.sysinternals.com . This is a small, but, powerful program with a lot
of nice features. It will show you everything that is running and how much
cpu is being used by each in %. It also graphs the last 5 minutes, or so,
giving you the ability to 'see' things that have turned on and off, helping
to find those elusive little pauses that go unexplained otherwise.
Heirloom, old and it worked great on my
Me (and now on XP)

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Additional/multiple instances of applications is quite normal, especially
Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe).

The only applications consuming resources are those that appear in process
explorer which may not/does not always show multiple instances of a
running process since sometimes multiple instances are just the same
process being accessed from a different entry point.

What does MSInfo | Software Environment | Running Tasks have to say here?

b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.

All that has happened is that explorer.exe has stopped and restarted.

c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

All perfectly normal. If explorer.exe crashes or restarts for some reason
(and there can be many) many applications do not show in the system tray
area when explorer restarts. Such programs include, in XP for example,
Microsoft's Task Manager.

Basically I do not believe you have any sort of problem.
--
Mike Maltby



John wrote:

Hi:
I think I have done my homework on this one. I have done a general
search and I have done a google groups search and I can't find
anything quite like this. Here we go.

Additional instances of programs (usually the first program I use
after startup) are appearing in the program manager (when I open it
with cnt/alt/del). They do NOTshow up in the taskbar or system tray
and therefore can not be closed in the usual fashion. These false
instances DO NOT show up when using process explorer either.They
aren't causing any real problem except that I think they consume
resources. I think this problem has been around for a long time and
I have just recently paid attention to it. Generally when resources
get low I have just restarted the computer and gone from there.

When I try to shut down the false instance (usually the top one on the
program manager list) using cnt/alt/del I usually get a "Shut Down
Windows" window, sometines I get a window saying that I "have elected
to close a toolbar". Whichever window I get I choose "cancel". The
message goes away and then a few seconds later I get a "program is
not responding, do you wish to close the program?" window (naming the
false program instance)" I tell it to close the program, and things
seem normal again.

Now, a couple weird things happen when I close that false instance;
a) The number of tasks running in process explorer DOES NOT CHANGE,
however they are rearranged
b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.
c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

Other than this "false program instance" problem and the perceived
vanishing resources the computer runs great.

Ok, so what have I done to try to isolate this? All of the things
listed below have NOT shown anything unusual as a result of running
them and the weird condition has persisted.
a) I regularly run scandisk. Every onece in a while (after weeks of
use) an error will show up in scandisk and it is easily fixed, and
there are no bad sectors.
b) I periodically run defrag
c) I have done a system restore recently for a different problem, but
I think this problem has been around for many months and it is not
practical to "restore it away".
.d) I have done a disk cleanup, and I have run; Internet Cleanup,
X-Cleaner and CC_Clean
e) I have run AVG Virus Scan, AdAware, SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster
f) I have even run Belarc Advisor to make sure that one of my updates
didn't get trashed.

As mentioned all of the above have not returned any unusual results.

Has anybody ever seen anything like this? When I searched I looked for
things like "program is not responding", "additional program
instances". "false program instances" and I also added the term
"program manager" or "system manager". I looked for variations of
all of this. I learned a lot, but I never found anything quite like
this.

Any ideas? There is a lot of stuff on this machine and the thought of
reinstalling it is daunting. If it got to be a real nusiance, it
might be more reasonable to replace the machine.

Thanks, John

John is already using Process Explorer. From his original post:
"These false instances DO NOT show up when using process explorer either"
--
Mike Maltby



Heirloom wrote:

Yoiu may have better luck with a better process viewer, rather than
the native one. If you are so inclined, check out Process Explorer,
free, from www.sysinternals.com . This is a small, but, powerful
program with a lot of nice features. It will show you everything
that is running and how much cpu is being used by each in %. It also
graphs the last 5 minutes, or so, giving you the ability to 'see'
things that have turned on and off, helping to find those elusive
little pauses that go unexplained
otherwise. Heirloom, old and it worked great on my
Me (and now on XP)

I'm sorry but I have nothing to add to my previous post which includes
that if you are worried about resources why are you running the Microsoft
Debug Manager (mdm.exe)?

As for your hanging application (what you call false positives) this could
be because the application concerned is either hanging when exiting or is
still doing housekeeping before closing down. For example Outlook
Express, msimn.exe, can continue compacting folders after the user has
shut down Outlook Express and in this case msimn.exe should never be
stopped as this can result in a corrupted message store, it will close
down once compaction has finished.

I hope you resolve whatever problem it is you think you are experiencing.
--
Mike Maltby



John wrote:

Mike:
I shut down everything in the task bar and system tray to get rid of
all of the clutter in MSInfo and then took a shot with MSInfo and
saved it I then shut down the extra application instance (Outlook
this time) using the program manager, refreshed MSInfo and took
another shot with MSInfo. The two shots were identical, nothing
changed in MSInfo after I shut down the second program instance. I
have included one of these shots as an attachment.

I wonder why shutting down the false application causes Explorer to
crash. Maybe it is looking for something that isn't there, and it
doesn't know how to handle it.

It is strange, this computer went for a couple hours and a couple
restarts this time before the "false" application showed up.

Do you see anything odd in the tasks that are running?

It is a nice day outside, maybe I should go enjoy it and write this
thing off as another one of those amazing secrets of science.

Thanks again, John

Yes, thanks I have that program. Process Explorer (proexp.exe) is the
program to which I refer in the initial post. I am sorry if I did not make
that clear. It is a great little program with lots of capilability.. My
problem is that I use it so infrequently that I have to familiarize myself
myself with it all over again every time I use it. Basically right now all I
am doing with it is turning it on and looking for unusual things.that are
running.
John

"Heirloom" wrote in message
...
Yoiu may have better luck with a better process viewer, rather than the
native one. If you are so inclined, check out Process Explorer, free,
from
www.sysinternals.com . This is a small, but, powerful program with a lot
of nice features. It will show you everything that is running and how
much
cpu is being used by each in %. It also graphs the last 5 minutes, or so,
giving you the ability to 'see' things that have turned on and off,
helping
to find those elusive little pauses that go unexplained otherwise.
Heirloom, old and it worked great on
my
Me (and now on XP)

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Additional/multiple instances of applications is quite normal,
especially
Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe).

The only applications consuming resources are those that appear in
process
explorer which may not/does not always show multiple instances of a
running process since sometimes multiple instances are just the same
process being accessed from a different entry point.

What does MSInfo | Software Environment | Running Tasks have to say
here?

b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.

All that has happened is that explorer.exe has stopped and restarted.

c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

All perfectly normal. If explorer.exe crashes or restarts for some
reason
(and there can be many) many applications do not show in the system tray
area when explorer restarts. Such programs include, in XP for example,
Microsoft's Task Manager.

Basically I do not believe you have any sort of problem.
--
Mike Maltby



John wrote:

Hi:
I think I have done my homework on this one. I have done a general
search and I have done a google groups search and I can't find
anything quite like this. Here we go.

Additional instances of programs (usually the first program I use
after startup) are appearing in the program manager (when I open it
with cnt/alt/del). They do NOTshow up in the taskbar or system tray
and therefore can not be closed in the usual fashion. These false
instances DO NOT show up when using process explorer either.They
aren't causing any real problem except that I think they consume
resources. I think this problem has been around for a long time and
I have just recently paid attention to it. Generally when resources
get low I have just restarted the computer and gone from there.

When I try to shut down the false instance (usually the top one on the
program manager list) using cnt/alt/del I usually get a "Shut Down
Windows" window, sometines I get a window saying that I "have elected
to close a toolbar". Whichever window I get I choose "cancel". The
message goes away and then a few seconds later I get a "program is
not responding, do you wish to close the program?" window (naming the
false program instance)" I tell it to close the program, and things
seem normal again.

Now, a couple weird things happen when I close that false instance;
a) The number of tasks running in process explorer DOES NOT CHANGE,
however they are rearranged
b) "Explorer" disappears for less than a second and when it reappears
everything that was under it (like systray etc.) appears elsewhere on
the process explorer list. Nothing appears to be operating under
"Explorer" anymore i.e. nothing is indented below it.
c) Sometimes the display properties icon, or some other icon
disapppears from the system tray.

Other than this "false program instance" problem and the perceived
vanishing resources the computer runs great.

Ok, so what have I done to try to isolate this? All of the things
listed below have NOT shown anything unusual as a result of running
them and the weird condition has persisted.
a) I regularly run scandisk. Every onece in a while (after weeks of
use) an error will show up in scandisk and it is easily fixed, and
there are no bad sectors.
b) I periodically run defrag
c) I have done a system restore recently for a different problem, but
I think this problem has been around for many months and it is not
practical to "restore it away".
.d) I have done a disk cleanup, and I have run; Internet Cleanup,
X-Cleaner and CC_Clean
e) I have run AVG Virus Scan, AdAware, SpyBot S&D and SpywareBlaster
f) I have even run Belarc Advisor to make sure that one of my updates
didn't get trashed.

As mentioned all of the above have not returned any unusual results.

Has anybody ever seen anything like this? When I searched I looked for
things like "program is not responding", "additional program
instances". "false program instances" and I also added the term
"program manager" or "system manager". I looked for variations of
all of this. I learned a lot, but I never found anything quite like
this.

Any ideas? There is a lot of stuff on this machine and the thought of
reinstalling it is daunting. If it got to be a real nusiance, it
might be more reasonable to replace the machine.

Thanks, John

Mike:
Mnd.exe is running because Dell put it in the startup group. It is probably
there to help their techs, but I never yet met one that had any idea what he
should do with it. I will take your advise and turn it off. The less things
running, the better.
Thanks, John

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
I'm sorry but I have nothing to add to my previous post which includes
that if you are worried about resources why are you running the Microsoft
Debug Manager (mdm.exe)?

As for your hanging application (what you call false positives) this could
be because the application concerned is either hanging when exiting or is
still doing housekeeping before closing down. For example Outlook
Express, msimn.exe, can continue compacting folders after the user has
shut down Outlook Express and in this case msimn.exe should never be
stopped as this can result in a corrupted message store, it will close
down once compaction has finished.

I hope you resolve whatever problem it is you think you are experiencing.
--
Mike Maltby



John wrote:

Mike:
I shut down everything in the task bar and system tray to get rid of
all of the clutter in MSInfo and then took a shot with MSInfo and
saved it I then shut down the extra application instance (Outlook
this time) using the program manager, refreshed MSInfo and took
another shot with MSInfo. The two shots were identical, nothing
changed in MSInfo after I shut down the second program instance. I
have included one of these shots as an attachment.

I wonder why shutting down the false application causes Explorer to
crash. Maybe it is looking for something that isn't there, and it
doesn't know how to handle it.

It is strange, this computer went for a couple hours and a couple
restarts this time before the "false" application showed up.

Do you see anything odd in the tasks that are running?

It is a nice day outside, maybe I should go enjoy it and write this
thing off as another one of those amazing secrets of science.

Thanks again, John

Once again, my humble apologies......I missed that in the first post, must
have been the lower case reference, :-).
Heirloom, old and leaving this one to the
guru


"Mike M" wrote in message
...
John is already using Process Explorer. From his original post:
"These false instances DO NOT show up when using process explorer either"
--
Mike Maltby



Heirloom wrote:

Yoiu may have better luck with a better process viewer, rather than
the native one. If you are so inclined, check out Process Explorer,
free, from www.sysinternals.com . This is a small, but, powerful
program with a lot of nice features. It will show you everything
that is running and how much cpu is being used by each in %. It also
graphs the last 5 minutes, or so, giving you the ability to 'see'
things that have turned on and off, helping to find those elusive
little pauses that go unexplained
otherwise. Heirloom, old and it worked great on my Me (and now on XP)