A collague of mine who has been fiddling with task manager (since I introduced it to him) have been asking me how to remove or stop the ctfmon.exe process from running on her computer. She has removed ctfmon.exe from her startup option using msconfig, but the process still appear on Task Manager.
Cftmon.exe process is an executable component Microsoft Office use to perform language related functions. It is related to the ‘Language Bar’ present in Microsoft Office. Language Bar in Microsoft office is the function that enabled you to control the computer using speech or a pen tablet. Although ctfmon.exe is a valid process and does not provide any security risk, ctfmon.exe should be disabled or remove if you don’t use the Language Bar function.
There are several steps to disable and remove ctfmon.exe completely from your computer.
Step 1 - Disable and remove Ctfmon.exe from Microsoft Office 2003
- Go to Control Panel > Add/Remove Program.
- Choose your Microsoft Office 2003 Installation and click “Change”.
- Tick “Choose advanced customization of applications” , then click Next.
- Go to “Alternative User Input” and click on the tab, a dropdown list will appear.
- Choose “Not Available” on the dropdown list.
- Continue.
Step 2 - Disable and remove Ctfmon.exe from Microsoft Windows XP
- Go to Control Panel > Regional and Language Options.
- Choose “Language” tab, click “Details”.
- Choose “Advanced” tab, tick “Turn off advanced text services”.
- Ok.
Step 3 - Disable and remove Ctfmon.exe from startup using Msconfig
- Go to Start Menu > Run > Type “msconfig.exe” without the quote “”.
- Go to “Startup” tab , untick cfmon box.
- Ok, and restart your computer.
Those are the steps on disabling and removing ctfmon.exe from your computer running Microsoft Windows XP.
One thing still puzzle me though, anyone know what ctfmon stands for? “Mon” in ctfmon might stand for “Monitor”, ctf?
March 16th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Nice instruction set. Bookmarking for future reference. I ripped this ctfmon explanation from another site:
ctfmon.exe = CTF Loader. Part of Microsoft Office. It activates
the Alternative User Input Text Input Processor (TIP) and the Microsoft
Office XP Language Bar.
When you run a Microsoft Office XP program, the file Ctfmon.exe (Ctfmon)
runs in the background, even after you quit all Office programs.
Ctfmon.exe monitors the active windows and provides text input service
support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard,
translation, and other alternative user input technologies.
March 17th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for the info Steve
May 12th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Thay doesn’t work but doing the process from the “RUN” on the start menu works you have to remove these DLL’s with the “RUN” program