jhonne

OK, Logmon.exe is some program that is automatically run at start-up, it seems to be part of the 'client security' package that is pre-installed on current Thinkpads. I don't really know what it does but I have a call open with Lenovo (IBM) to try and find out.

Task Manager is a core Windows component that allows you to see all of the software processes running on your PC - there are many underlyinging processes that make 'Windows' happen before you even run a user application like Word or Excel.

In Windows XP, you can find task manager by right-clicking on an empty area of the task bar (the thing with the start button on the far left). The menu that appears will give you the option of running 'Task Manager'.

When it loads you will see a number of tabs, Applications which shows you the user programs is the first tab and then Processes which shows the underlying programs that make up Windows and your applications.

Click on the Processes tab, you will see a column based list running processes, the 3rd column by default is ' CPU' and this shows how much CPU power is being used by any program at any point in time. If you click on the CPU heading the list will be sorted by which programs are using the most CPU from lowest to highest. Click on the CPU heading again to change the sort order from high to low.

You will usually see at the top of the list a process called 'System Idle Process' this is always present and represents the amount of CPU not being used by anything else - nothing to worry about here.

Below this the list is likely to be continually moving as different applications use bits of CPU time. However in my case, immediately below System Idle Process, the program 'logmon.exe' seems to be continually present using a consistent 20-30% of CPU time.

To kill a process, click on its name and then press the 'End Process' button, you will be asked to confirm and then the process should vanish from the list. In some cases (where a process is badly behaved and does not respond to Task Manager trying to kill it) you may need to repeat this several times.

I wouldn't advocate randomly killing processes because they are using up CPU time, after all any program you choose to run will use up CPU.

Generally speaking if the PC is responding slowly, have a look in TM for something using consistently high CPU, try searching for the process name on google to see what it is related to if you can't work out which program it is associated with by its name.

Killing a process doesn't delete anything, it just stops the program from running, many programs are automatically loaded at startup so for example, if I kill logmon.exe now, it will be run again the next time I start Windows.

There is a program available called 'security task manager' which will allow you to kill a process and prevent it being started next time Windows is run but I would suggest that if you do find that logmon.exe behaves in the same way as it does for me, I would contact your support helpline to get further advice.