A customer had a minor spyware infection (webhancer and some other spyware item).

After removing the nasties, I take a look at speeding up the PC. 

His system has 512 Mb of RAM… a decent amount for a plain PC that is used for internet, and some old games… yet it is using around 550Mb (Ie its using the much slower paging file for extra RAM)… I disable the usual useless XP services, and various useless startup programs, and after a reboot, memory usage is still around 460Mb :-O

I find a process called tmproxy.exe using about 65Mb. It turns out to be a trend process, and its a large chunk of memory considering how ineffectual trend is at blocking spyware…

Combine it with 30Mb for AVGAS, and I can see where all the memory is going.

I’ve read reports that say the tmproxy.exe memory footprint can be improved (made smaller) by reinstalling TIS… others say disabling anti-spam and as many other features as possible (whats the point of that!?).

If the customer hadn’t just paid for a 12 month subscription renewal, I would tell him to toss TIS.

For the moment, he will buy more RAM, buy a 1 year subscription to AVGAS, and after that, remove TISand buy a 2 year subscription to AVG Anti-Malware (ie AVG-antivirus and AVG-antispyware).