A look in the Task Manager of Windows XP or Windows Vista will reveal all the applications, open windows and processes that are running on the computer system. Many of the processes displayed are important system processes that are required to run Windows properly.

A process that is appearing quite often is jqs.exe. It is the Java Quick Starter which gets installed alongside the Java Runtime Environment on Windows XP and Windows 2000. Its purposes is to speed up the launch of Java applets on the computer system.

Jqs.exe preloads several important Java Runtime Environment files into the computer's memory. What this means is that these files will always be in computer memory in case a Java application gets loaded to speed up that Java program.

Java applets and applications will be loaded faster thanks to the preloading process which users can experience both on the Internet and the computer desktop.

The whole process usually consumes between 1 to 2 megabytes of RAM and around 2 megabytes of virtual memory, never using more than 20 megabytes. This means that on most recent machines (which often have more than 1 gigabyte of RAM) the program consumes an insignificant amount of resources.

The process has been designed to check the system load and other system information before starting the preload process. It will automatically postpone preloading the Java files if the system is low on memory, in high load situations or low battery.

Also, despite the high number of Input / Output processes the program initiates Windows will periodically clean the cache, assuring that jqs isnt using too much of a machines memory. The fact that this program uses very small amounts of resources means that leaving it active is not a bad idea, especially if one makes use of the Java Runtime Environment quite often.

Users with older hardware and those that do not make use of Java regularly (or at all) should consider deactivating the process to save memory and processing power. This can be done by opening the Control Panel in Windows, double-clicking the Java icon and selecting the advanced options when the panel opens.

The miscellaneous section contains the option to disable the Java Quick Starter. The option is active by default on Windows 2000 and Windows XP computer systems. Unchecking that option will disable the jqs.exe process from being loaded during system startup and from running in the background. It could however lead to a slighter higher startup time for Java applications.

Windows Vista users will not notice the process as it is deactivated by default on their computer system.