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I've just got the new 2.8GHz quad core 4GB WinXP with VRPC-SE running and to my horror I found several times RISCOS was running extremely sluggishly. When I looked at the running tasks I found 3 instances of RSTools running. I killed two of them and RISCOS ran much better.

Why are multiple copies of RSTools running? I've tried looking through the boot sequence and so far have not found where it gets started, or why its being run more than once.
I checked on the old machine and I was surprised to find two instances of RSTools running. Its was not sluggish, and also, on subsequent reboots the new machine has not been sluggish either, despite three instances of RSTools running. So I'm not sure if its the real cause of the sluggishness that sometimes occurs.

It seems that in normal operation RSTools uses around 20 to 30% of the CPU (as measured by !TaskUsage) on the old machine. Sometimes one instance would take over 60% while the other only 20%. Killing one instance didn't seem to be detrimental to system operation but when only one instance is running its CPU usage drops to less than 1%. It therefore looks like the multiple instances are mutually communicative and unnecessarily using up processor power. This must have been going on for years and I never noticed before.

Whats going on?
Mike

Most likely several soft podules have copies of RSTools on board the ROM. I've seen this before. Just RMKill a couple of them (make sure you leave one running) and that should sort it.