[Thinkpad] OT: Cleaning up a home network

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

Here are some programs you can use to determine which processes are
running on each computer:

Andrew Aronoff's Silent Runners - <http://www.silentrunners.org/>
Merijn's Hijack This - <http://www.merijn.org/programs.php>
Solid Oak Software's LookInMyPC - <http://www.lookinmypc.com/>

Some of the utilities that Microsoft got when they acquired SysInternals
last year would probably be helpful as well.  Visit Microsoft's web site
at <http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/> and download AutoRuns,
Handle, Process Explorer, Process Monitor and PsTools.

You can also make use the utilities which come with Microsoft Windows
such as  NetStat, System Configuration Utility, TaskList and so forth.

With these you should be able to get a good idea of what programs are
consuming the most resources on your friend's computer.

What would probably help the best, though, would be to move the network
routing functions off the desktop computer and onto a dedicated device,
such as one of those ubiquitous 802.11b/g routers with a four-port Fast
Ethernet switch built in.  A quick visit to CompUSA's web site found
them starting at $25.00.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky


At 10:00 AM 2/10/2007, you wrote:

>Message: 1
>Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:53:48 -0500
>From: Donald MacQueen <dmacq at erols.com>
>Subject: [Thinkpad] OT: Cleaning up a home network
>To: thinkpad at stderr.org
>Message-ID: <45CD179C.8090107 at erols.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
>A friend of mine asked me to come look at his home network. He has a
>cable connection coming into a desktop machine and then wireless
>connections from there. He said the gateway desktop runs very slowly.
>
>He say that he runs Spysweeper, which I know nothing about, religiously.
>I plan to take a cd with SpyBot Search and Destroy as well as Ad-aware.
>What I don't have is a tool to allow me to easily identify what programs
>Task Manager says are running.
>
>Any suggestions for my toolkit? Any other ideas about what to look for?
>
>Thanks.
>
>Donald