LSM

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE! If you do not currently receive LSM you can easily do so totally free of charge by clicking the 'subscribe' button and entering your email details on the following page.	Welcome Ed – Jonathan Burnside Welcome to volume 2 issue 5 of LSM. We hope this issue can bring you a little light into your lives, as the British summertime appears to have been failing miserably over the past week or so! In this issue we have two very enlightening articles. The first of these examines the ‘Task Manager’. This is something many people have heard of but know little about. It is in fact a very useful tool that can help you monitor general system performance and individual programmes and processes and even shut them down if you wish… read the article to find out more! Our second installation this month looks at why the colours on printed media differ from the colours that can be seen on screen; something that perplexes many of us! It examines the properties of colour and the actual mechanics behind producing screen colour and printed colour… a very interesting article indeed. Anyway we hope you enjoy this issue and please keep sending us feedback and letting us know which subjects you would like us to cover.


Windows Task Manager in English ©2004 - By Meryl K. Evans You use Ctrl+Alt+ Del to see what’s running on your PC, to close crashed programs and processes, and to check performance. You probably avoid a few processes whose names mean nothing to you, but they’re essential to Windows. svchost.exe sure likes to appear all the time and multiple times at that. What’s taskmgr.exe? Oh yeah, it’s the window you’re looking at right now. ctfmon? Is he related to Pokemon? navapsvc.exe? Navy? Napa Valley? Navel? NOTA (none of the above). This is not a comprehensive list as that would take days. It has the standard processes as well as process names from popular applications. If you want to know about a process, the best place to go is? processlibrary.com. Just like adware and spyware, there are bad processes that come to life thanks to the bad guys like Trojans and viruses. Also, beware the bad guys like to use legitimate names of processes. For example, rundll.exe is a system process that should not be terminated. However, recent reports have stated, "It can also be the LOXOSCAM virus depending on Operating System and file path; this is always a virus on Windows XP and 2000 operating systems however." acrotray.exe Acrobat Assistant that is used when printing documents to a PDF. The process should not be removed while converting documents to PDF. ADService.exe Active Disk Service is a component of the Iomega zip drive. AppServices.exe Also for the Iomega zip drive. ccEvtMrg.exe Associated with Symantec’s Internet Security Suite. Keep it and protect your PC. ccSetMgr.exe Also associated with Symantec’s Internet Security Suite. Keep it and protect your PC. csrss.exe System process that is the main executable for the Microsoft Client / Server Runtime Server Subsystem. It should not be shut down. ctfmon.exe Non-essential system process. If you’re using only English as the language, then it is not needed. However, it’s recommended to leave it alone. explorer.exe This must always be running in the background. It’s a user interface process that runs the windows graphical shell for the desktop, task bar, and Start menu. iexplore.exe Internet Explorer browser. lsass.exe Local Security Authority Service is a Windows security-related system process for handling local security and login policies. Navapsvc.exe, nvsrvc32.exe, and navapw32.exe These are Symantec’s North AnvtiVirus processes. They or whatever virus program you use should run all the time. realsched.exe RealNetworks Scheduler is not an essential process. It checks for updates for RealNetworks products. It can be safely disabled. rundll32.exe A system process that executes DLLs and loads their libraries. savscan.exe Nortons AntiVirus process. Keep it. services.exe An essential process that manages the starting and stopping of services including the those in boot up and shut down. Do not terminate it. smss.exe Session Manager SubSystem is a system process that is a central part of the Windows operating system. If you try to kill it, it will be difficult? hence, the importance of leaving it be. spoolsv.exe Microsoft printer spooler service handles local printer processes. It’s a system file. svchost.exe x 6 You may have more than six appearances of this process or less. It’s there multiple times to handle processes executed from DLLs. Leave it there. System This is a file that stores information related to local hardware settings in the registry under ?HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE?. Kill it and kiss your PC’s stability bye bye. System Idle Process Calculates the amount of CPU currently in use by applications. This won’t go away no matter how hard you try. Don’t try it, OK? taskmgr.exe Appears when you press Ctrl+Alt+ Del. wdfmgr.exe Windows Driver Foundation Manager is part of Windows media player 10 and newer. Better not to stop the process. winlogon.exe Handles the login and logout processes. It’s essential. winword.exe The great Carnac says, You’re running Microsoft Word.? Don’t panic if you see something you have on the ?bad guy? list. svchost.exe is important, but some are good guys and some are bad guys. Do your research before deleting anything. For instance, I have admin.exe, which has been reported as a bad guy. However, it is the admin process for one of my programs. When I closed the program, admin.exe also went away.

Why There Are Color Differences in Printing from your PC by Paul Curran This article describes the basic properties of colour, what the relationships are between them and the differences between what you see and what you actually get using your inkjet cartridges. Properties Most of you will have come across these three; Hue, Saturation and Brightness; if you have ever messed around with colour settings of your images. Hue: For example; blue, green and violet are all hues. They are colours. The dictionary definition of ' Hue' is; "the attributes of colours that permits them to be classed as red, yellow, green, blue or an intermediate between any adjacent pair of these colours." Saturation: This refers to how vivid the colour is. The higher the amount of grey relative to the amount of hue, the less vivid it will be. Brightness: Relates to the relative darkness or lightness of the colour. In 1905 American artist A. Munsell published a colour measurement system, naming the three parameters, Hue, Value and Chroma ( Hue, Saturation and Brightness as above). This three dimensional relationship resulted in colour identification in this format, for example; 7.5YR 7/12. Here we have a yellow-red hue tending with a value of 7 and a chroma of 12. There are 40 pages in the book covering all colours in the complete Munsell system. Monitor and printer colour production Printer: Printer colours are produced from inkjet cartridges emitting minute patterns of ink dots placed on paper. All colours that you see come from just four colours; cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (K). As an aside, a mixture of cyan, magenta and yellow should produce black, but in reality a touch of black is needed to get it. Monitor: A phosphor is a substance that emits light when subjected to radiation. Colour phosphors are illuminated with electrons in your monitor and hence images are produced. There are three coloured phosphors in each pixel on the screen; red (R), green (G) and blue (B). Monitor and printer colour differences As will be aware, the printed output you receive hardly ever matches exactly that seen on your monitor 100% of the time. This is because the way that colour is produced is different and the range of colours that are produced is different between the monitor and printer, as described above. There are ways to get a closer match. You can experiment with printer driver settings or use image editing/colour management software to help match up the two. Printing Process Most inkjet printers can't produce variations of the three primary colours so they employ a process called 'halftoning' to represent the thousands of colours needed. The two methods used for this are 'Dithering' and 'Error Diffusion'. With 'dithering', different coloured ink dots are aligned to give the appearance of neutral colours...suitable for large areas of colour such as in graphs and bar charts. There are often additional settings such as 'Coarse Dithering'...for images with limited detail and shading, and 'Fine Dithering' for images with significant amount of detail. If there is only text to print then 'No Halftoning' should be selected. With 'error diffusion' inkjet cartridge dots are merged with surrounding colour dots to produce natural colours with the possibility of subtle colour gradation, ideal for detailed images or photos. When scanning, be aware that it will be more difficult to get a good match because the scanner will make the image using the CMYK data format, then RGB on the monitor and finally changed again to the CMYK data format via the printer. (c) Paul Curran, CEO of Cuzcom Internet Publishing Group and webmaster at Ink Cartridge Store, providing discounted brand name compatible ink cartridge and laser toner supplies.

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Vol 2, Issue 5: Monday,2nd August 2005.