I’ve been posting Task Manager tips all week (here, here, here, and here), so I’ll finish up with a few of my favorite tweaks and techniques for this valuable utility.

First, I keep Task Manager running all the time. From the Options menu, I choose the Hide when minimized option, which keeps it from displaying a button on the taskbar. Instead, it minimizes to an icon in the system tray which glows green to indicate the percentage of CPU resources in use at any given time. If you see a bright green icon here, you know that something is sucking up the CPU.

I also set Task Manager to stay on top (Options, Always on Top) when it’s in use.

Next, I customize the display of columns on the Process tab. With the Processes tab selected, click View, Select Columns. Most of the choices here are fairly geeky, but the Peak Memory Usage and CPU Time columns can be useful.

Most people don’t realize the Task Manager window is resizable. Drag the right border to the right to make room for more information in each listing; drag the bottom border down to make room for more entries in the list.

Finally, if Task Manager’s menus and status bar disappear from view, don’t be alarmed. You double-clicked on a chart on the Performance or on a border of another tab. To return to normal view, double-click any empty space around the border.

Using Task Manager to identify a process that’s taking more than its fair share of CPU or memory resources is a start, but what happens when you can’t identify the specific process causing the problem? That’s likely to occur if a system service starts to spin out of control. In that case, you’ll see the excess resources attributed to a generic process (usually Svchost.exe), with no indication of which service is actually responsible.

Service Host (Svchost.exe) is a core piece of Windows XP code that collects a number of lower-level system-critical services and runs them in a common environment. By gathering multiple functions together, this arrangement reduces boot time and system overhead and eliminates the need to run dozens of separate low-level services.

Because different groups of services have different requirements in terms of system access and security, Windows XP creates a number of different groups. To see a list of which services are associated with each Svchost instance, click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, and press Enter. In the Command Prompt window, type tasklist /svc /fi “imagename eq svchost.exe” (including the quotation marks).

(Note that the Tasklist command is only available with Windows XP Professional. If you have XP Home Edition, you can download the file from here.)

After you gather the names of services running in the context of a Svchost instance, you can do further research to see which one is causing your performance problem.

For more details on how to use the Tasklist command, type tasklist /? at a command prompt.

Yesterday I explained how to use Task Manager to monitor CPU performance. (For a refresher course on Task Manager, see Get to know Task Manager.) Today I explain how to use Task Manager to keep track of random access memory (RAM) usage.

Continue reading “Tip of the day: Use Task Manager to track memory usage” →

Is your system slowing down mysteriously? Slowdowns have a variety of causes, and you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. When you notice performance becoming sluggish, the first thing you should do is open Task Manager and see if a process is using up more than its fair share of your CPU’s muscle.

Continue reading “Tip of the day: Monitor CPU performance with Task Manager” →

If you use Windows, you should know about Task Manager. This essential system utility allows you to keep track of which programs are running, kill a program or process that has stopped responding, monitor your system’s performance, and keep track of how your system is using memory. The Task Manager utility has been a part of various Windows versions for years, but the version included in Windows XP does more tricks than any of its predecessors. In fact, this week’s tips will focus exclusively on Task Manager functions.

To start Task Manager, press Ctrl+Shift+Escape. (If you use the default settings for Windows XP with Fast User Switching enabled and your computer is not logged on to a domain, you can start Task Manager with the simpler Ctrl+Alt+Delete sequence.)

The Task Manager interface consists of four tabs (a fifth tab, Users, is visible if Fast User Switching is enabled). The Applications tab, shown here, lists every running program that appears as a Taskbar button. It also includes items that run as programs but hide their taskbar buttons and appear only as tray icons when minimized.

I don’t know anyone who uses Task Manager to actually manage programs, even though the various buttons and menu items available here offer a full range of options for doing just that: The Switch To button makes the selected program active, for instance, minimizing the Task Manager window. Click Windows, Bring To Front if you want to surface a program or Explorer window that’s currently hiding behind other windows while still leaving Task Manager in the foreground.

The most important use for the Applications tab is to kill a program that isn’t responding. The Status column normally displays “Running” for every program in the list. If you see “Not Responding,” that’s a clue that the program might have hung. (Some programs fail to respond to requests about their status when they’re busy with a CPU-intensive task, so be sure to wait before concluding that the program is hung.) With very rare exceptions, you should be able to kill any program by selecting its entry in the list on the Applications tab and clicking End Task.

Tomorrow: Using Task Manager to monitor performance.

It’s annoying to have to hunt around on the desktop or drill through cascading menus to find the programs you use every day. Why not assign keyboard shortcuts to those programs? As long as you follow the rules, these shortcuts can be effective.

This technique works only with Windows shortcuts, which can point to a program, a document file, or a Web address – you can’t assign a shortcut directly to an executable file or a document file. In addition, the shortcut must be stored on the desktop or in the All Programs menu – Windows ignores your instructions completely if the shortcut is stored anywhere else. Finally, the shortcut key combination must consist of a letter or number plus at least two of the following three keys: Ctrl, Alt, Shift.

To assign a keyboard shortcut, right-click the shortcut icon and choose Properties. On the General tab, click in the Shortcut key box and press the key combination you want to use (if you press only a letter or number, Windows adds Ctrl+Alt to the key assignment). Click OK to save your change. In the example below, I’ve assigned the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C to the Windows Calculator; now, from anywhere within Windows, all I have to do is press those keys to pop up the calculator instantly.

Are you tired of trying to hit the tiny maximize/restore button in the top right corner of a window? There’s an easier alternative: Double-click anywhere on the title bar. The entire title bar acts as an oversized toggle. Double-click to maximize the window; double-click again to restore the original window size.

The AutoComplete feature in Internet Explorer allows you to save form data and user name/password combinations associated with Web pages. Firefox offers a similar feature with some important usability improvements. Today’s tip tells you how to work with this feature in IE and Firefox.

Continue reading “Tip of the day: Managing saved passwords and form data for Web sites” →

When you open a dialog box to change a setting in Windows or a Windows program, the buttons often include both OK and Apply. What’s the difference? It’s simple:

• Click Apply if you want to make the selected change without closing the current dialog box. This is the right choice if you’re making several changes in different parts of a dialog box and you want to apply one set of changes before moving on to the next.
• Click OK if you want to make the selected change and close the dialog box. If you’re making a single change, you don’t need to click Apply before clicking OK.

Clicking the Cancel button closes the current dialog box without saving any changes. This is the preferred option if you opened a dialog box to check a setting and you want to be certain you don’t accidentally change it.