Troubleshoot Windows with Task Manager

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.

กSystem Idle Processก

กSystemก The Windows System Process

กSMSS.EXEก Session Manager Subsystem

กCSRSS.EXEก Client Server Runtime Subsystem

กWinLOGON.EXEก The Windows Logon process

กSERVICES.EXEก Services Control Manager

กLSASS.EXEก Local Security Authentication Server Service

กsvchost.exeก Service Host

กspoolsv.exeก The print spooler service

กexplorer.exeก Windows Explorer

‘tASKMGR.EXEก The Task Manager

‘regsvc.exeก Remote Registry Service

กSystem Idle Processก 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 itกs name as a search term in google.

Task Manager can also be used to tweak your system if itกs 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 กMem Usageก 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 กGo To Processก, Task Manager will open the Processes tab and highlight the process that runs the application. On the Processes tab, if you rightclick on the name of a process, you can choose กSetPriorityก 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 itกs 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 กEnd Process Treeก to kill the process and any subprocesses 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 itกs 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 Newsletter Send a blank email to [email protected]

This article was posted on August 16, 2004

by Stephen Bucaro

Virtual Memory What is it?

Virtual Memory What is it?

by: Michael Arcand

I recently got an email asking about virtual memory. The person who sent me the question was getting an error on random occasions from their Windows operating system stating กYour computer is low on virtual memoryก. They wanted to know what is virtual memory, and if this error does occur, what can I do to fix it? Here is the answer that I sent out:

กVirtual memory is when your computer uses the hard drive as a memory relay once your real memory has been used up. This usually starts happening when someone has installed new programs or is using multiple large programs at one time. Have you installed something new recently, or changed how many programs you are using at one time? Does it seem to occur when you are using a specific program, or perhaps after running a specific program for a longer than usual period of time?

To check your virtual memory settings, follow these steps:

1. Click on Start

2. Select Control Panel

3. Click on System

NOTE: When you first click on System, it will show you the กGeneralก information tab. This tab will indicate how much RAM (physical memory) your system has installed (usually towards the bottom, should be something like ก128 MB of RAMก. Make a note of this number.

4. Click on the Advanced tab

5. Click on the Settings button under the top box, labeled Performance

6. Click on the Advanced tab, and this will show your current setting for virtual memory.

NOTE: Windows usually manages this number automatically, and usually doesn’t require any adjustment. Optimally, this number should be somewhere between 2X and 3X the number noted earlier for the amount of system RAM. You can change the setting by clicking on the Change button located at the bottom of this section. You can then set the minimum to 2X (put in the actual number) and the maximum to 3X of the physical RAM.

If you answered กyesก to any of the questions I posed at the beginning, you may need to reevaluate the system requirements of any programs involved and consider an actual physical RAM upgrade, if your motherboard will support additional RAM. That can have a big impact on whatกs happening.

About The Author

Michael Arcand is a CompTIA A+ Certified computer technician and entrepreneur specializing in computer tips and tricks for home users. His latest venture is online at www.techsupporthelpdesk.com, providing costeffective tech support for home and small business users.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 11

by Michael Arcand

Explore the Internet in a Whole New Way

Explore the Internet in a Whole New Way

by: Daniel Punch

For a long time now Microsoftกs Internet Explorer has ruled as กKing of Internet browsersก. Like most of Microsoftกs products an initially brutal marketing campaign pushed Internet Explorer into the mainstreamกs consciousness and from then on it was the logical, default choice. Itกs free with the operating system, works well, loads any page and is easy to use. Other web browsers soon faded into obscurity and sometimes even died in the shadow of the new king of the pack. Netscape Navigator, the former กKing of the browsersก, has now ceased commercial operations and has been taken over by the fan base. Opera is fading into obscurity and Mozilla was facing a similar fate, until recently.

Mozilla Firefox (formerly known as Firebird) is probably the largest threat that IE has faced in recent times. Currently, according to http://www.w3schools.com, IE is the browser used by 69.9% of Internet users and Firefox is used by 19.1%. This might not seem like much, but according to http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/ an educated guess at the number of people that use the Internet is somewhere around 605,600,000 users (or was in 2002, the number will have increased substantially by now). That means that (after some erroneous math) a rough stab at guessing the number of people using Firefox is probably over 115,064,000, which isn’t a bad user base at all.

When a friend of mine from university first tried to convince me to switch to Firefox I wasn’t particularly interested. Basically, IE has done everything that Iกve wanted in a web browser. He went on at great lengths about the security aspects, the inbuilt popup blockers, download managers and so on, but Iกd spent a fairly large amount of time and money on antivirus programs, firewalls, spyware removers, and my browser was secure enough. I also have a download manager that Iกm very happy with and refuse to change from. After much cajoling I finally agreed to try this newfangled software. Iกm glad I did too, because now I have no desire to go back.

Firefox is very easy to install and use. Thereกs nothing complicated, you simply download (for free) and run the install file and then when you run the browser for the first time you get presented with the option of importing your IE favourites (a nice feature, with the click of a button everything is moved across to ease your transition) and also the option of making Firefox your default browser. My initial reaction was fairly apathetic; Firefox seemed pretty much the same as IE and in essence, it is. It has all the basic features of IE, but then I discovered it adds so much more.

The first feature to really grab me is the tabbed browsing. Many alternative browsers and even IE plugins support tabbed browsing (where the new pages can be opened in a tab in the one window, instead of filling the task bar with buttons) but Firefox seems to make it so easy and useful. All you do is click a link with the middle button on your mouse (most newer mice have three buttons, the third often being placed under the scroll wheel) and a new tab opens up containing the page requested. Middle clicking on any tab in the window will close it, without having to actually go to the tab and click close. CtrlT will open a new blank tab, and CtrlTab will cycle through them (similar in fashion to AltTab cycling through the open programs). What this all leads to is a much neater Internet experience, with you being able to group certain pages into browser windows, leaving the start bar much cleaner and easier to navigate.

The next feature that caught my attention was the search bar built into the browser. Itกs small, sleek and simple, built into the righthand side of the main toolbar beside the address box. You can add many different sites to the search bar and then select the site you wish to search from a dropdown menu. Then itกs simply a matter of typing your query in and hitting enter to be taken directly to that page and your search results. This makes searching Ebay, Google, Internet Movie DataBase, Amazon etc. very quick and easy as you can simply type in the desired search criteria as you think of it and get the results back fast. You can get search bar plugins for IE but they tend to take up lots of room, contain ads, and you can usually only have one site per search bar.

There are more features than I could write about here but I will tell you that Firefox has impressed me greatly. Browser hijacking: the act of a malicious website script changing your homepage or search page (particularly common on IE, sites will change your default search page so that every time you type an address into your address bar their site gets a hit) is now a thing of the past (at least until someone gets vicious enough to work out backdoors in Firefox, an unlikely event for at least a little while given the massive market share still held by IE). Since changing over I have received substantially fewer attack notices from my Firewall. Sites load quickly, and if you get an address wrong you don’t have to wait for a page to load, you just quickly get a message informing you that the site doesn’t exist. Then there are the extensions that can be downloaded to add all sorts of new features to the browser.

The only downside that I have found is the fact that because IE is the dominant web browser, some websites are coded in such a way that they don’t work properly on other browsers. These sites are few and far between, but occasionally you will still need to fire up IE to view a page. The infrequency of this occurring is enough that it doesn’t annoy me too much, but it will be nice when everything works 100%.

At the end of the day, itกs probably not a vital switch. Both programs suffice in allowing you to plug in and explore the vast world of the Internet with ease and accuracy. However, itกs worth a look though because what starts off initially as กI have no real reason to change backก quickly becomes กI am never going backก. So, as the official Firefox website encourages, ‘rediscover the webก.

About The Author

Daniel Punch

M6.Net

http://www.m6.net

Daniel Punch is a university student always looking to overthrow the man and support the underdog, provided it doesn’t actually cost him anything.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 01

by Daniel Punch