Going over my list of running processes, and comparing to a list made on January 5, I see that Avast 2014.9.0.2018 has started ctfmon.exe. where it apparently did not do so 5 months ago with whatever Avast version was current at the time. That being said, I have seen ctfmon.exe show up from time to time in my TaskList output, even before January 5.
A bit of research shows ctfmon is used for providing text input support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard translation, and other alternative user input technologies. As far as I know I don’t use any alternative user input technology… No touch, no tablet, no speech recognition, exclusively EN-US keyboard and UI language. I do occasionally open the Avast UI, and for example I may occasionally disable shields briefly using the right-click context menu on the Avast balloon in the system tray.
Since Process Explorer currently shows that ctfmon.exe was started by AvastUI.exe, my questions are these:
- Under what conditions does Avast start ctfmon?
- If I want to make my system run leaner (fewer processes), is there something I can configure or avoid doing in the Avast UI to eliminate the startup of ctfmon.exe?
It’s not a big deal, I’m not having any problem - I just like to keep my system as lean as it can possibly be. A running process uses some resources.
Thanks.
-Noel