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Task Manager is a Windows
system utility that displays the tasks or processes
currently running on your computer. To open Task Manager,
press Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Applcations tab lists the
applications currently running on your computer. A single
application may actually consist of several running
processes, and many programs that run 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 Program Manager, which
allows you only to close aplications. However, you can
download one of the many Task Manager utilities from the
Web.
The Processes tab displays
a comprehensive list of all the processes currently
running on your computer. This can be very useful for
monitoring your system. The process tab displays
information about the processor useage and memory usage of
each process. The problem is, how to identify a process.
Below is a list of some processes you may see in Task
Managers Processes list.
"System Idle
Process"
"System" The Windows System Process
"SMSS.EXE" Session Manager Subsystem
"CSRSS.EXE" Client Server Runtime Subsystem
"WinLOGON.EXE" The Windows Logon process
"SERVICES.EXE" Services Control Manager
"LSASS.EXE" Local Security Authentication Server
Service
"svchost.exe" Service Host
"spoolsv.exe" The print spooler service
"explorer.exe" Windows Explorer
"TASKMGR.EXE" The Task Manager
"regsvc.exe" Remote Registry Service
"System Idle
Process" is basically another name for the time when
Windows is doing nothing. There are hundreds of thousands
of processes that run on a computer, so you will
definitely find names of many other processess that are
not listed above. For a list of well known processes,
visit www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm.
You can also learn about almost any task by using it's
name as a search term in google.
Task Manager can also be
used to tweak your system if it's running slow. The
[Performance] tab displays running graphs of your
computers CPU and memory usage. If the CPU usage seems to
be running over 80 percent most of the time, or if the
memory usage seems to be running higher than the total
physical memory, you may want to shut down some
applications or processes.
On the Process tab, you can
identify processes that are consuming a lot of processor
time. Click twice on the CPU column heading to sort the
CPU column so the processes hogging the most CPU time on
top. You can sort the "Mem Usage" column the
same way.
On the Application tab, if
you right click on the name of an application and, in the
popup menu that appears, choose "Go To Process",
Task Manager will open the Processes tab and highlight the
process that runs the application. On the Processes tab,
if you right-click on the name of a process, you can
choose "SetPriority" 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 shut down an application, you will
shut down any processes related to that application. Or,
you might choose to shut down a background process that
you can identify. To shut down an application or process,
click on it's name in the list to highlight it, then click
on the [End Task] button.
On the Processes tab, if
you right click on the name of a process, you can choose
"End Process Tree" to kill the process and any
sub-processes started by the process.
Task Manager can also be
used for troubleshooting. If an application freezes up,
you can open Task Manager and shut down the application.
If the entire system freezes up, you can use Task Manager
to shut down a process that is hogging all the CPU time or
memory.
If you spend some time
monitoring your computer with task Manager, eventually you
will become familiar with the processes that commonly run.
Then, when you see an unfamiliar process, you can do a
little investigation to make sure it's not a virus. For
example, if you see msblast.exe in the process list, your
computer is infected with the Blaster virus. You might be
able to detect and eliminate a new virus before an
antivirus update is available.
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