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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).
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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About The Author To learn how to
maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design
a Web site and make money on the Web visit
bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp
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