Understanding Task Manager

Task Manager is a fundamental application built into Windows, it is a powerful tool that allows you to understand exactly what's going on in your machine.

Opening Task Manager

There are a few ways to open task manager, on any OS you can right click the start bar and click "Start Task Manager / Task Manager". You can also press Ctrl-Alt-Del in XP or Ctrl-Shift-Esc in Windows Vista/7

Applications

The Applications page lists at a simple level, which programs are actively running and interacting with the user with a graphical interface (i.e. have their own window). Right clicking on an application lets you do a few useful things including "Switch to", "End Task" or "Go to Process".

Processes

The Processes page lists every Process (application or part of an application) running on a machine. It also lists the CPU time they are using and the amount of RAM they are working with. You can use Process Explorer (link in the sidebar) to get more information on each entry. If you are running 64bit windows, then any 32bit applications will be marked *32. If a Process is broken, using alot of ram, or you think it shouldn't be there, you can right click on it and "End Process". You can also change it's priority up and down so it gets more priority over other processes (Set Priority) or you specify which CPU Cores the process can run on (set Affinity).

Performance

The Performance tab is very important for inspecting the overall status of the machine and is useful in understanding why you may be getting slowdown in normal desktop scenarios. The Boxes at the top graph your CPU usage. There is a box for each core (or virtual cores). When idle you want total usage to be less than 10%, if it is higher you should look into which process/es are causing it, and switch it/them off in msconfig.

The boxes below show Memory (RAM) usage. Ideally when idle you want your ram usage below half of your total ram (Total Physical Memory). Windows 7 will "Cache" the rest of your ram (filling it with things you may want so they load quicker) but it does release this RAM back to you if you open a new program. If your ram usage goes over your Total Physical Memory then your machine begins to use "virtual memory". This means that it now uses your Hard drive (which is incredibly slow) as more RAM. This is very undesirable and will result in your entire system slowing down. If this occurs you should immediately remove processes that use a lot of ram or get a Ram Upgrade.

Networking

The Networking tab simply graphs the active network connections on your machine. It tells you the speed as well as the utilisation of the networks which can be useful when troubleshooting network connections.

If you need any help, feel free to comment, ask a question in the bar on the left, or email me at inbox@andrewgirdler.co.uk