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Pastimes : Computer Learning -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wily who wrote (5202)	8/16/1999 11:23:00 AM
From: doug-e-mini	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110583

From Feb. '99 PC Magazine: "If you're running Win98 or running IE4 under Win95, you may notice that sometimes IE can bring your whole system down if it crashes. This may occur because, if you installed the Windows Desktop Update (meaning that IE replaced your Windows shell with itself), then Windows Explorer is running in the same process as IE. If IE goes down, so does your system. To prevent this occurrence, you need to run IE in a separate process from Windows Explorer. Microsoft warns that this might decrease general performance, but your browser shouldn't crash your system as often, so we think this is a good trade off."

To: wily who wrote (5202)	8/16/1999 8:54:00 PM
From: PMS Witch	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 110583

Browse in a new process ... A process is 'roughly' a program that is running. Windows enables more than one to be running at once. But they're NOT running AT ONCE. They're taking turns running, but switching so fast it seems they're running simultaneously. Computer programs are a combination of code and data. When the CPU switches to a new process, it starts executing new code, BUT, before this can happen, it must have new data too. This switching work is wasted processing power. Most people, when they open a new browser, suspend using the old one until they finish. In this case using a new process offers little advantage beyond reliability. If you open the new browser while the old one's still busy (Ex: downloading), then both will share system resources. When you browse in a new process, the code and data for that new process are treated as a new unit. To switch to a new process, a few registers in the CPU needs changing. This is much quicker than transferring program data. It's like workmen leaving a complete set of tools and supplies at each job site: Instead of loading the truck before moving from job to job and then unloading it, they just jump in the car and drive over, immediately resuming work exactly where they left off. Granted, there's a bit of overhead getting the new process started, but once it's going it should be more efficient and more importantly, more reliable because much less is happening 'behind the scene' when switching. I hope I haven't simplified the truth out of it with this explanation. Cheers, PW.