unloading resident programs

[kdc914]

Before I run certain hardware intensive games like Titan Quest on my marginal system (P4 3.2GHz, 1GB DDR dual channel, NV7600GT AGP8x) or my son's (Athlon XP 2400+, 1GB DDR single channel, Radeon 9800Pro 128MB AGP4x), I have to unload the resident portion of my backup software. On my son's PC, I also have to unload a time monitoring/restricting program.

Ideally, I'd like to return to the ancient DOS days where I could run a batch file or script to unload these, launch the game, then reload them when the game was finished. Anyone have any ideas on that which do NOT include using Task Manager every time? My son hasn't figured that one out yet and I'm not keen to show him...

 

[kdc914]

(crickets chirping... pins dropping...)

anyone? anyone at all?

 

[Navid]

What exactly are those programs?
Why do they have to run all the time?
Only run them when you need to. But, don't have them start at startup by default.

You may get more replies to this if you post in the OS forum.

 

[kdc914]

The backup program needs to run all the time because backup happens automatically overnight. (I have learned the hard way that if you leave backup to one's own memory rather than an automatic process, it just doesn't happen properly.) My son's machine also runs PCTimeCop, a program which limits how much time he can spend on his machine.

If the backup program is unloaded (by script, etc) prior to game launch, then reloaded (again, by script, etc) when the game ends, then it will be running as necessary to backup the PCs.

I didn't post in OS because I thought it was more of a support/programming issue than OS related. If I don't get any ideas here, I'll crosspost. Thx.