Multiple copies of nwjs, ruby, pia manager running

NLrunner

I'm new to using VPN's.  I'm using Windows 10 on a home PC with a netgear router connected by ethernet cable.

It's possible it's working fine and what I'm seeing is some kind of security loopback that Norton Anti-virus does.

If I open Task Manager, I have a green nwjs and 2 black nwjs running.  I have 2 pia_managers.  And 2 Ruby interpreters.  There's just one openvepn running.  If I look at the graph, I have 2 ethernet connections running simultaneously.

If I go to my Network Settings, there's my old "Ethernet" connection shown, which is Private and connects to my ISP.  PIA setup a "Ethernet 2" that is Public and connects to Unknown Network.  That part concerns me, the unknown public network. 

Is this normal or is something wrong with the setup.

NLrunner

Turns out the in Task Manager the green nwjs is the application and the black icon nwjs is the tray icon.  I don't know why I would have 2 black nwjs tray icons running.  And I have 2 Ruby interpreters running.  So from the Task Manager I "end task"ed the duplicates that had lower activity and PIA continues to run ok.  This still happens after doing a clean re-installation.

Is there some hidden internet connection on my PC that PIA automatically is installing itself to and how would I find it?

Max-P

Those are all normal! The multiple nwjs instances are just a result of how Chromium works (which is what nwjs uses to render run the tray icon and UI). If you use Chrome and look at task manager, you should also see that each tab has multiple processes running to serve it.

The two ruby processes are what is used to run the app (pia_manager.exe only extracts Ruby and then runs the app within it). There are two because one is dedicated as a supervisor process to restart the main one in the event that it crashes.

This should add up to a total of 7 processes (or 8 while connected, for the additional openvpn.exe process).

NLrunner

Great explanation.  Thanks!