Besides the standard Control Panel,
Computer Management, Administrative Tools and System Tools categories,
there are several other important tools that you can use to manage and
maintain Windows.
Task Manager
The
Task Manager is one tool you’re bound to use frequently, perhaps more
than any other. Whenever an application crashes, you believe you’re
running some suspect process that you want to kill, or you want to
check on the state of system resources (for example, RAM usage), you
can use the Task Manager. Even as nothing more than an educational
tool, the Task Manager is informative.
The
fastest way to bring up the Task Manager in Windows 7 is to press
Ctrl+Shift+Esc or to right-click over an empty area on the taskbar and
select Task Manager from the pop-up menu. The Task Manager displays the
last-used view by default; the first time you run it, it opens to the
Applications tab (see Figure 1).
However, if you want to find out in detail what’s happening inside your
system, select the Processes tab, which we’ll discuss shortly.
The
Task Manager in Windows 7 has six tabs, up from five in Windows XP, but
it does not include the Shut Down menu found in the Windows XP version.
The six tabs are described next, in turn.
Applications Tab
Click
the Applications tab to see a list of the programs currently running on
the computer. Not a lot of information is displayed—only the
application name and the status (running or not responding). However,
this tab does provide a more complete report than you’ll get by
glancing at the taskbar buttons or via the dialog box you see if you
press Alt+Tab.
You can sort the list by
clicking the column heads. If an application has multiple documents
open, the application appears only once in the list, probably with the
name of the document that is foremost at the time (has the focus). Some
applications don’t comply with this single-document interface (SDI)
approach, listing each new document as a separate application. Some
examples of non-SDI applications are Microsoft Office programs such as
Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
From this
list, you can kill a hung application. If an application has hung, it
is probably reported in the list as Not Responding (although this is
not always true). Click the End Task button to terminate the task. If a
document is open and unsaved, and if, for some unexpected reason, the
program responds gracefully to Windows’ attempt to shut it down (which
is unlikely), you might see a dialog box asking whether you want to
save the document. More likely, Windows 7 will just ask for
confirmation to kill the application.
If
the Task Manager seems stuck (it doesn’t reflect newly opened or closed
applications), it could be that you’ve inadvertently paused the Task
Manager. Choose View, Update Speed, and then choose any setting other
than Paused. Another approach, if you want to keep it paused, is to
choose View, Refresh Now. |
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Before
you give an application its last rites, pause for a bit. In general,
it’s not a good idea to kill an application if you can avoid doing so.
Terminating an application can cause instability in the OS (even though
it shouldn’t in most cases because of the kernel design). Or, at the
least, you can lose data. Try “jiggling” the application in various
ways, in hopes of being able to close it gracefully first. Switch to it
and back a few times. Give it a little time. Maybe even do some work in
another application for a few minutes, or take a trip to the water
cooler. Try pressing Esc while the application is open, or, if you
notice that one program seems to stop responding when another program
is open, close the other program first.
When
executing some macros in Word, for example, I noticed that one of my
macros hangs for no apparent reason. It seems to crash Word. So, I
killed it from the Task Manager, losing some work. I later realized the
solution was to press Esc, which terminated the macro. Having slow
network connections and attempting to link to nonexistent web pages,
printers, or removable media can also cause apparent hangs. Try opening
a CD or DVD drive door, removing a network cable, or performing some
other trick to break a loop a program might be in before resorting to
killing the program from the Task Manager. This is especially true if
you’ve been working on a document and you might potentially lose data.
Some
applications will so intensely perform calculations that the Task
Manager will list them as Not Responding. If you suspect this, give the
program 5 minutes or so to complete its thinking; I’ve learned the hard
way to be patient with some applications.
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Notice
that you can also switch to an application in the list or run a new
one. Just double-click the application you want to switch to (or click
Switch To). Similarly, to run a new application, click New Task (Run),
and enter the executable name or use the Browse dialog box to find it.
If
the Task Manager doesn’t drop into the background when you click
another program, choose Options and uncheck the Always on Top setting.. |
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Processes Tab
Whereas the Application tab displays only the full-fledged applications you’re running, the Processes tab, shown in Figure 2, shows all
running processes, including programs (for example, Virtual PC),
services (for example, Event Log), or subsystems. In addition to just
listing active processes, Windows 7 displays the user or security
context (that is, the user, service, or system object under which the
process is executing) for each process. Also, by default, the
percentage of CPU utilization and memory utilization in bytes is
listed. You can change the displayed information through the View,
Select Columns command.
Tip
If,
for some reason, the Task Manager can’t seem to kill off a program that
you started, try logging off and then back on. If it’s still there or
if you don’t want to log off, try this procedure:
1. | Click Start, All Programs, Accessories.
| 2. | Right-click Command Prompt and select Run As Administrator. Confirm the User Account Control dialog box.
| 3. | Type the command taskkill /f /im
program.exe but enter the program’s actual name as it’s displayed in the Processes tab in place of program.exe. Do not use this method to try to kill a system service. Instead, use the Services tab.
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Almost
any listed process can be terminated by selecting it and then clicking
the End Process button. There are some system-level processes that even
an administrator doesn’t have sufficient privileges to kill.
Tip
At
the bottom of the Processes tab is a button labeled Show Processes from
All Users. If you click this, you can see not just the processes under
your user account and those of the system but also those of other
active users. Plus, when displayed, you can also terminate them using
the End Process button. This button is protected by UAC. |
You
might also discover at times that an application will fail to be
killed, typically due to a programming error or a memory glitch. In
those cases, you should reboot the system. You might find that
sometimes a hung application also will prevent a normal shutdown. If
your attempt to reboot fails, you’ll have to resort to manually turning
the power off and then back on. Hopefully, you saved often and didn’t
lose too much work.
Altering the Priority of a Task
In
the beginning, all tasks are created equal. Well, most of them, at
least. All the processes under your user account’s security context
will have Normal priority by default. Most kernel or system processes
will have High priority. You might want to increase or decrease the
priority of a process, though changing the priority typically isn’t
necessary. To do so, right-click the task and choose the new priority
through the Set Priority submenu.
Caution
Avoid altering the priority of any task listed with a username of SYSTEM.
This indicates the process is in use by the kernel. Altering the
execution priority of such processes can render your system
nonfunctional. Fortunately, process priority settings are not preserved
across a reboot, so if you do change something and the system stops
responding, you can reboot and return to normal. In some cases, raising
the priority of an application can improve its performance. However,
increase the priority in single steps instead of automatically setting
it to the maximum. Throwing another top-priority application into the
mix of kernel-level activities can render the system dead, too. |
You
can assign six priority levels to processes: Realtime, High,
AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal, and Low. Realtime is restricted for
use by administrators. You should keep away from High because it can
interfere with essential OS operations (especially if you have several
user processes set to High).
Services Tab
The
Services tab separates services from other memory-resident processes.
Use it to quickly determine the services installed on your system and
which ones are currently running. It lists services by name,
description, status, and group. Right-click a service to stop or start
it.
Performance Tab
The
Performance tab of the Task Manager indicates important conditions of
your OS. It shows a dynamic overview of your computer’s performance,
including CPU usage, memory usage, and totals of handles, threads, and
processes (see Figure 3).
Tip
If
you have a multiprocessor or multicore computer and you want to assign
a task to a given processor, right-click the process and choose the Set
Affinity command. Choosing this command guarantees that the process
receives CPU time only from the CPU you choose. |
From
the Performance tab, the View menu includes CPU History and Show Kernel
Times. The former command is used to show different graphs for each CPU
(only useful on multiple-CPU systems). The latter command sets the
display to show kernel activity in red and user activity in green on
the CPU and memory usage. If your system has two or more CPUs or a
dual- or quad-core CPU, you will see a separate CPU gauge for each
physical CPU or CPU core. (How cool is that?)
Note
System cache
is the total current swap and RAM area allocated for system operations.
When your computer has to go to a disk cache to access information, it
significantly slows down overall system performance, which is why
having more system RAM is almost always better. |
Although
CPU usage is interesting, the most important of these numbers is memory
usage. You can easily check in the Physical Memory area to see how much
memory is installed in your system, how much is available for use by
applications before disk caching begins, and how much the system is
using for caching.
The Kernel Memory area
reports the memory in use strictly by the OS for running the OS
internals. Nonpaged kernel memory is available only to the OS. This
memory is in physical RAM and can’t be paged out to the hard disk
because the OS always needs fast access to it, and it needs to be
highly protected. Paged memory can be used by other programs when
necessary.
In the System section, you can
see the number of handles, threads, and processes. Handles are tokens
or pointers that let the OS uniquely identify a resource, such as a
file or Registry key, so that a program can access it. A thread
represents a single subprocess. An increasing number of programs are
multithreaded, running multiple subprocesses at the same time.
Multithreading applications are designed to run better on
multiprocessor or multicore processors such as the AMD Phenom and
Athlon 64 X2, Intel Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad, and others.
Most
of these size reports are of use only to programmers. However, the
charts can offer strong, telltale signs of system overstressing. If you
see, for example, that your page file usage is consistently nearing the
top of its range, you are running too many programs. If the CPU is
topped out most of the time, you also could be in trouble. Perhaps you
have a background task running that is consuming way too much CPU time.
An example could be a background program doing statistical analysis or
data gathering.
Note
When
the Task Manager is running, even if minimized, a green box appears in
the notification area, indicating CPU usage. It’s a miniature bar graph. |
Networking Tab
The
Networking tab displays a bandwidth consumption history graph. As
network operations occur, this graph will plot the levels of usage. If
the system has two network adapters, you can determine which one is
active, and separate graphs show activity on each adapter.
Users Tab
The
Users tab shows a list of all active users on this system or connected
via the network. From here, you can disconnect a network user, log off
a local user, or send a user a text message. The Users tab will be
visible only if you are not participating in a Windows 2000/Windows
Server 2003 Active Directory–based network or have not disabled Fast
User Switching if participating in a workgroup.
