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Troubleshoot
Windows with Task Manager
By
Stephen Bucaro
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).
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The
System Tray is the small area at the bottom right hand corner
of your computer screen. The date and time are usually displayed
in the system tray. - Detechnify.com
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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.
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A
process is a unit of work or a 'job' that the computer has
asked a part of the software running on the computer to
undertake. - Detechnify.com
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"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.
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When
a program or operation becomes unresponsive or you cannot
get the program to minimize or do anything, it is said to
have 'frozen'. - Detechnify.com
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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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This
article is written by a guest writer. The views and opinions within
this article are those of the author and are not those of Detechnify.com
You
can get details of the writer at the end of the article.
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