help me figure out what this system process is doing

May 21, 2009 2:14 PM

What is this system process (WinXP): "bcmdeviceandtaskstatusservice.exe" ?

This process is taking up 500 mb of memory on my computer. How do I identify what it is doing? Seems to be from broadcom, but a google search doesn't yield any insights.

Thanks....

posted by dfriedman to computers & internet (6 comments total)

This page (translated from Chinese) indicates that it's Broadcom's fingerprint ID service for Dell computers.
posted by koeselitz at 2:39 PM on May 21

Hmm. I don't even have a fingerprint scanner on my computer! I guess I get to block it from starting up in MSCONFIG....
posted by dfriedman at 2:43 PM on May 21

…even if it's not, it's probably a Broadcom service, which means that it most likely has to do with your internet connection.

The best way to find out, however, is to download Microsoft's awesome utility called Process Explorer and run that. It's actually quite awesome for this kind of thing: it's like the standard Process tab of the Task Manager, except it's got loads of extra data on every process (descriptions, paths, real-time usage, dependancies, etc) that's incredibly useful. And it's a tiny program, so it doesn't take up much space.

It should give you the company name of the creator of the software and a description of what it does.
posted by koeselitz at 2:46 PM on May 21 [2 favorites]

Judging by the .exe name, it's probably a generic app for any broadcom device. You probably have their NIC or somesuch.

Still, I've found most of those services are redundant and best nuked.

And of course, it could be disguised malware. Run a full scan.
posted by mad bomber what bombs at midnight at 2:46 PM on May 21

I run a full scan with three different pieces of software nightly, so I'm not concerned about it being malware.
posted by dfriedman at 2:52 PM on May 21

Thanks for all the responses!
posted by dfriedman at 3:03 PM on May 21