Task Manager is a Windows system utility that displays the tasks or processes that are currently running on your computer. To open the Task Manager, press Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Applications tab lists the applications that are currently running on your computer. In reality, a single application can consist of several running processes, and many programs running in the background are not listed (you can see icons for some of these programs in the system tray).
Note: With Windows 98 and Windows Me, Ctrl+Alt+Del will open the Program Manager, which only allows you to close applications. However, you can download one of the many Task Manager utilities from the Web.
The Processes tab displays a complete list of all processes currently running on your computer. This can be very useful for monitoring your system. The process tab displays information about the processor usage and memory usage of each process. The problem is how to identify a process. Below is a list of some processes that you may see in the task managers process list.
“Idle system process” “System” The Windows system process “SMSS.EXE” Session manager subsystem “CSRSS.EXE” Client server runtime subsystem “WinLOGON.EXE” The logon process Windows “SERVICES.EXE” Service Control Manager “LSASS.EXE” Local Security Authentication Server Service “svchost.exe” Service Host “spoolsv.exe” Print Spooler Service “explorer.exe” Windows Explorer Windows “TASKMGR.EXE” Task Manager “regsvc.exe” Remote Registry Service
“System Idle Process” is basically another name for the time when Windows does nothing. There are hundreds of thousands of processes running on a computer, so you will definitely find names of many other processes that are not listed above. For a list of known processes, visit www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm. You can also get information about almost any task by using its name as a Google search term.
Task Manager can also be used to tweak your system if it is running slowly. The Performance tab displays running graphs of your computer’s CPU and memory usage. If CPU usage seems to be above 80 percent most of the time, or if memory usage seems to be greater than total physical memory, you may want to close some applications or processes.
On the Process tab, you can identify processes that are consuming a lot of processor time. Double-click the CPU column header to sort the CPU column so that processes hog the most CPU time at the top. You can sort the “Memory Usage” column in the same way.
On the Application tab, if you right-click on an application name and choose “Go to Process” from the pop-up menu that appears, Task Manager will open the Processes tab and highlight the process that the application is running . In the Processes tab, if you right-click a process name, you can choose “Set Priority” and promote the priority of the process you need (or demote the priority of a different process to free up some resources).
If you go to the Application tab and close an application, you will close all processes related to that application. However, you can choose to kill a background process that you can identify. To close an application or process, click its name in the list to highlight it, then click the End Task button.
On the Processes tab, if you right-click a process name, you can choose “End Process Tree” to end the process and any threads started by the process.
Task Manager can also be used for troubleshooting. If an app freezes, you can open Task Manager and close the app. If your entire system freezes, you can use Task Manager to kill a process that is hogging all your CPU time or memory.
If you spend some time monitoring your computer with Task Manager, you’ll eventually become familiar with commonly running processes. Then, when you see an unknown process, you can do some digging to make sure it’s not a virus. For example, if you see msblast.exe in the list of processes, your computer is infected with the Blaster virus. You may be able to detect and remove a new virus before an antivirus update is available.
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