I discovered in Activity Monitor that I have several leftover processes running in the background that shouldn't be there anymore. I deleted these preference panes long ago with an application that was supposed to find all the extraneous files. So how do I get rid of them?
I've tried to kill the processes by quitting, force quitting, terminal commands involving killall/kill, launchctl unload and they still won't go away. They just restart themselves. What's more is I can't find where these reside on my system. They aren't listed in the "Login Items" section under my user account, as they are owned by root. I've searched but found no exact answer to my problem. I've found similar situations but not the same.
Here are the processes in question in my particular case:
Best Answer
Many preference pane applications also have background processes or kernel extensions. Removing the preference pane doesn't remove them, so you have to run an uninstaller or delete the files separately.
Background processes are often started by launchd services in the LaunchDaemons or LaunchAgents folders. You can remove them by just deleting the property list files (and restarting or logging out and back in). Some applications add login items that can be removed in the Users & Groups preference pane.
The executables for the background processes are often somewhere in the root or user library, but they don't necessarily have to be removed.
Kernel extensions (in /System/Library/Extensions/) can also be removed by just moving them to the trash.
You can use Consultant's Canary to print a list of components that didn't come with OS X.