so basically litestep.exe was using high cpu resources, and process tamer was taming it, which was having a negative effect on its performance.
[snip]
ps. this would be a good reason to turn on the balloon messages for when programs are being tamed, it would have given you a visual clue that the taming of litestep was the cause of the problem.
-mouser
That's the strange part, cause Litestep doesn't use high CPU resources, and thus wasn't being tamed. I have balloon messages turned on, but didn't get any notification about litestep.exe. The log obviously says nothing about litestep, either.
I'm beginning to think that there's something else that's fishy, although Process Tamer and LiteStep are certainly involved... I've got no idea what else could do this, but the next step that might help would be to unload/load specific LS-modules
You may recall that I had a bit of a problem with LaunchBar Commander, docking and LiteStep? That was with an experimental LS-build with docking features (the latest official release doesn't support it.), but LBC didn't dock properly and didn't "release" the docked area even when minimized (or closed? I don't remember). Other dockable apps (Miranda, for instance) docked properly. I'm getting to the point...
... which is that I'm thinking that maybe some of your apps have problems with alternative shells in general or LiteStep specifically? I'm not jumping to conclusions, as this may just as well be something wrong with LS or with my system, but from my no-coder's point of view it could look like some of your code might rely on explorer being the shell OR Litestep NOT being the shell

? Could any other alt-shell users please reply. What do you think?