You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering what on earth that
dpupdchk.exe process is doing in your Task Manager window… there’s no description and
it just keeps coming back.
So what is it anyway?
In case you aren’t sure what we’re talking about, if you sort by “Image Name”
you might
see something similar to the screenshot below. And that’s what we’ll be explaining
to you today.



So What Is It Anyway?

This process is some type of automatic update checker from Microsoft IntelliPoint
(as far as we can tell), but here’s how we actually
diagnosed it…
First, if you are using Vista you can right-click on the process and choose to
Open File Location.





…which will open up the containing folder, so you can drill down into exactly what the file
is by looking at the properties. Unfortunately, this process just has zero
information
in the properties
 dialog…
shame on you, Microsoft!



Further investigation led me into the registry, and by using the
Process Monitor utility
from
Sysinternals I was able to determine that the process was querying a registry
key named “Intellipoint Pro Auto Update”…
a clear giveaway that this process has to do with updating of some type.



Then there’s also the fact that in the start menu is a shortcut using a similar icon that says
Check for Updates. It’s one of those special shortcuts that you can’t see the
target for…
one has to wonder why they bothered to
make
this so complicated.



Dear Microsoft: If you are reading this article, perhaps you might leave a comment and shed some light on what it’s really doing. Then you might want to start learning how to document things.

How Do I Get Rid of It?

Keep in mind that removing pieces of Microsoft software without fully understanding what
they are is probably a bad idea and shouldn’t be attempted by anybody 
under 
any 
circumstances ever, even slightly,
probably.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way… here’s where we stand:
You can take
one of two routes to get rid of it:

1. Uninstall IntelliPoint in Control Panel (losing extra mouse functionality)
2. Replace the dpupdchk.exe file with a dummy file that does nothing.

A dummy file, you say? Whatever for?

The problem is that if you delete the dpupdchk.exe file, every single time you
open the
mouse panel you will get horrible errors. Since we like to avoid
horrible errors,
I’ve created a dummy executable that does nothing at all, which you can
replace thecurrent one
with.
First, browse down to the following folder (adjusting if necessary for your install path).

Code:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft IntelliPoint

Now rename the existing dpupdchk.exe file to something else
(using the handy Take Ownership script if necessary to gain access).


Once you’ve renamed that file, replace it with this fake dpupdchk.exe file created by the
fine folks here at How-To Geek. It’s a blank executable that does nothing, but feel free to
scan it with at least 74 anti-virus engines if you’d like to make
sure.
And thus ends the tale of the phantom dpupdchk process. But what about svchost.exe, jusched.exe,
or dwm.exe? The journey continues!

So you’ve been going through Task Manager trying to figure out why so many services are running
when you notice there’s two items for Windows Media Player in the list… but you don’t even use Media Player. What’s up with that?
It’s not like the processes take a lot of memory… I just get irritated when there’s a process
that restarts for no good reason. You disable it, and then somehow it’s back.
Annoying!



What Is This Service Anyway?

Windows Media Player 11 can share media between different computers on the same network,
and can even share media with the XBox 360 as well. For this to work, there’s a network sharing
service that shares the library even if Media Player isn’t open. It’s really a great system if you use it.
Both of these processes are part of the Windows Media Player Sharing system, so if you use
those features you should not disable it.

Disabling Media Sharing in Media Player

The best way to remove these services is to just use the configuration panel… that way they
don’t come back the next time Media Player gets opened, accidentally or
otherwise.
Open up Windows Media Player, and then click on the little arrow under “Library” and choose
the “Media Sharing” option from the menu.



If you are using a custom theme, or otherwise can’t get to that menu, you can also open the
Options panel, choose the Library tab, and then click on “Configure Sharing”





Either one of the above will bring you to the Media Sharing dialog. Uncheck both of the boxes
that you see here.
Note: If they are unchecked, you should check them, click apply, and then uncheck them and 
click OK… basically to reset the settings.



Once you hit the OK button, you’ll be prompted with an extremely important dialog… do you want
to turn sharing off for everybody? Yes!



This will actually turn off the service, and remove the startup entry for wmpnscfg.exe.
(Note that you’ll have to kill that process manually the first time, or log off and back on)
At this point you should be able to use your computer without either of those two processes running.
If you continue to have problems getting rid of them, you can read down further for more
troubleshooting steps.

Disabling Media Player Network Sharing Service in Services

You shouldn’t actually need to do this part, as using the configuration instructions above should
work… but if you are having problems getting rid of it, here’s where you
need to go.
Open up Services from Control Panel, or type services.msc into the start menu search/run box.
Find the service in the list:



Open it up by double-clicking on it, and then change the service to Disabled.



One note here… If you try to re-enable Media Sharing in Media Player, it will ignore the fact that it’s disabled. This is why you need to make the configuration change there
as well.

Alternative Methods using Regedit

If you are still having issues, you can do some further checking to make sure that the two services
won’t be re-enabled again. Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box,
and then browse down to the following key:

Registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences\HME

There should be a DWORD value on the right-hand side named DisableDiscovery which you
can set to a value of 2 (setting it to 1 also worked for me). Just make sure that it’s not
set to 0.
To make sure that the wmpnscfg.exe is turned off, you can browse down to the following key
in the registry:

Registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

This is where Windows turns that application on… if there’s an item for it in this list, then
delete it.

You are no doubt reading this article because you are wondering why this dwm.exe process
is taking more memory than you think it should, and you are curious what it does. Thankfully
for you, we have the answer.

So What Is It Anyway?

Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe) is the compositing window manager that gives you all
those pretty effects in Windows Vista: Transparent windows, live taskbar thumbnails
(that you can resize now), and even the Flip3D switcher that you can disable and
replace with Switcher.






What happens in Vista is that applications write the picture of their window to a specific
place in memory, and then Windows creates one “composite” view of all the windows on the
screen before sending it to your monitor. Because Vista is keeping track of the contents
of each window, it can add effects when layering the windows such as the transparency we’re
all used to, as well as the live preview thumbnails.
The benefit to using this approach is that Windows Vista can utilize the hardware acceleration
features in your video card to create very smooth animations for minimizing and restoring,
and even for the transparent effects.

What about Memory Usage?

If you open up Task Manager, you can see the dwm.exe process in the list, typically
taking somewhere between 30-50MB of memory in my testing:



The size of the DWM process is controlled by the number of windows that you have open,
since each window requires a buffer in memory to store the contents of the window.
If you have a large number of very large windows open, DWM will use more memory.
The benefits of using a compositing window manager are worth that relatively small
amount of memory under most circumstances.

Does Switching to the Vista Basic Theme Turn it Off?

The short answer is no, just switching to the Vista Basic theme will not turn off DWM,
but it will reduce the memory usage a great deal.



How do you switch to Vista Basic? Just right-click on the desktop, choose Personalize,
and then Window Color and Appearance:



Click on classic appearance properties at the bottom:



Then choose Windows Vista Basic and click the Apply button:



Note that I’m not recommending switching to the Basic theme, just explaining how to do it.

So How Do I Turn dwm.exe Off Then?

Note that I don’t recommend turning this off unless you are playing games in 
fullscreen mode, and even then it likely won’t help increase speed.
The only way to get rid of the dwm.exe process is to stop the service from running.
Open up Services from Control Panel or the start menu, and then find the “Desktop
Window
Manager Session Manager” service in the list, and click the stop button.
Note that you will be switched to the Vista Basic theme when you click the button.



To permanently disable it, double click on the item and select Disabled from the “Startup type” drop-down:



If you want to use the command line instead, you can open an administrator mode command prompt and use one of these commands:

 
Stop Service
 
net stop uxsms
 
 
Start Service
 
net start uxsms
 
 
Disable Service
 
sc config uxsms start= disabled
 
 
Enable Service
 
sc config uxsms start= auto
 
 

By now you should understand what the process does… do you really still want to get rid of it?