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15 Task Manager tips for a faster PC in Window 7
By: Lion_Heart Date: February 2, 2013, 10:58 pm
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15 Task Manager tips for a faster PC in Window 7
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At first glance Task Manager looks like nothing more than a
geeky way to tell you what you already know, the names of the
programs running on your PC.
Explore out favourite Task Manager tricks, though, and you'll
find all kinds of options for monitoring your system, detecting
and resolving problems, especially in its most modern Windows
Vista/Windows 7 incarnation. Here's what you need to know.
1. Browse your processes
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager. By default the
first thing you'll see is the Applications tab, but this is
misleadingly named and of little much use as it just lists
top-level windows. If you want to see what's actually running on
your PC then click the Processes tab, click "Show processes from
all users", and scroll down the list. If you don't know what a
process is then right-click it and select Properties to get more
information, such as the folder where it's stored, which will
usually offer additional clues.
2. Troubleshoot startup problems
Windows Media Player is known to crash from time to time (you
may have noticed this). Occasionally it'll crash without having
any visible window, though, so you won't see there's a problem.
Then, when you come to restart the program, nothing will happen
because it's blocked by the crashed copy in RAM.
If you find Windows Media Player won't launch, then, fire up
Task Manager, click the Processes tab and look for a
WMPlayer.exe process. If you find one, and there's no window,
then it's probably crashed. Right-click it in Task Manager,
select End Process, and once it's shut down you should be able
to start Media Player as normal.
Much the same problem can happen with other applications, so if
something won't start, or is just misbehaving, then it's always
a good idea to look for previous instances of the program. Don't
use the "End Process" on anything unless you're 110% sure that
it's safe to do so, though - terminating something
system-critical can lock up or crash your PC immediately.
3. View memory use
It's often interesting to see which programs are using all your
RAM. To find out, click the Processes tab, then click View >
Select Columns, and ensure Memory - Working Set and Memory -
Private Working Set are checked. You'll now see two estimates
for your processes use of RAM.
The first, "Memory - Working Set" shows you how much physical
memory is currently being taken up by each process. Some of this
RAM may be shared by other processes, though (shared DLLS, for
instance) so this figure tends to overestimate memory use.
The second, "Memory - Private Working Set" shows you how much
physical memory this process alone is using (that is, it can't
shared with anyone else). It will almost certainly consume
additional RAM, though, so this figure tends to underestimate
memory use. It's a little more reliable than the Working Set
alone, but really you need to see both.
Now click the "Memory (Private Working Set)" column header so
the largest figures are at the top. You'll immediately get a
good feel for where your RAM is going, and which programs (if
any) you need to close or tweak to get some of it back.
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4. Identify RAM-hogging services
Your list of processes should contain many called svchost.exe
(if not, then you've not clicked "Show processes from all
users"). This is the service host, a process that's used to run
several Windows services. But what if this turns out to be
grabbing large amounts of RAM? Which services might be to blame?
To find out more, right-click a particular svchost.exe and
select Go To Services. Task Manager will open the Services tab
and all the services managed by this particular instance of
svchost.exe will be highlighted. Task Manager has no way to tell
you how much each RAM each of the services are consuming
individually, unfortunately, but this does at least greatly
reduce your options. (And a hint: in most Windows Vista
installations, ReadyBoost is by far the greatest
resource-hogging service.)
5. Diagnose disk thrashing
Ever wondered exactly why your hard drive's been thrashing for
ages, even though there's no-one at the PC? Click the Task
Manager Processes tab, then click View > Select Columns, and
check I/O Read Bytes and I/O Write Bytes. Click OK.
The new columns will show you the total amount of data read or
written by a process, which applies to network activity as well
as your hard drive. The busiest processes will have the largest
figures, and if a process is active now then its totals will
tick up as you watch.
6. Spot resource leaks
Sometimes processes grab more and more Windows resources,
without ever quite getting around to releasing them. 32-bit
Windows in particular has only a limited supply, and if this
goes on for too long then your PC will become unreliable, then
eventually lock up or crash.
Task Manager can help you spot a resource leak, though. Click
the Processes tab, then click View > Select Columns, check
Handles, User Objects and GDI Objects, and click OK. Now check
these occasionally, along with the memory figures we mentioned
earlier. Some of these may rise dramatically, on occasions - an
antivirus tool will use many more handles when scanning, for
instance, as they're used when accessing files - but if a
particular resource figure is high, keeps rising, and never
falls back to its starting point, then you may have a problem.
7. Stop a runaway process
If a particular process has gone rogue, using all your CPU time
and reducing everything else to a crawl, then Task Manager may
be able to help.
First, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc and wait for Task Manager to appear.
If your runaway process is completely tying up the CPU then this
can take a while, but if you don't want to reboot (you've an
application with unsaved data, say) then be patient. We'd give
it at least 10 or 15 minutes.
When Task Manager appears, look for the process consuming all
your CPU time (click Processes, then click View > Select Columns
and check CPU if that column isn't displayed). If you want to
kill the process completely, then you could right-click it,
select End Process and it'll die (most of the time).
This doesn't always work out as you expect, though. If the
process is system-critical, maybe a Windows component, then
terminating it may crash your system immediately (and it always
introduces a risk of system instability). If you've data you
need to save elsewhere then it may be better to try and slow
down the rogue process, reduce its grab on your resources, so
you can use other programs again and close everything down
properly. Fortunately Task Manager can help here, too.
Right-click your CPU-hogging process, select Set Priority > Low,
and Windows should immediately give more CPU time to just about
everything else on your PC. The program will still be running,
it just shouldn't interfere with other apps to the same degree,
and they should be accessible again.
If there are still problems, right-click the process and select
Set Affinity. This option lets you decide which CPU cores a
process can use. If you clear one of these then that core will
become available to other applications, which should
significantly improve their performance.
8. Understand CPU utilisation
Occasionally your PC will seem slow, as though something is
using all your CPU time, but the regular CPU column won't
display an obvious candidate. So what's going on?
Launch Task Manager, and click the Performance tab to see a
graph of your CPU Usage History: it's pretty, but there's more
to it than that. Click View and select Show Kernel Times (so
it's checked). What you'll now see is two graph lines: one
green, representing total CPU utilisation, and one red,
representing the time consumed by the kernel.
When the green peaks are high, red peaks low then the culprit is
a user mode process, probably just a regular application. But if
the red peaks are consistently high then that shows your CPU
time is being grabbed by something in the kernel, probably a
driver, but perhaps also a Windows component, maybe even some
deeply embedded malware.
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9. Create a dump file
If a program has locked up then you may able to use the Windows
Debugging Tools to find out why.
Launch Task Manager first, click the Processes tab, right-click
the hung process and select Create Dump File. When the process
file has been written then Task Manager will give you its name
and location.
Then launch the debugger WinDbg, and click File > Open Crash
Dump File. Entering the analyze -hang command may tell you more
about why a program has locked up, and if not then you can
always use other debugger commands to tell you more about the
process, its use of RAM, and so on (see the debugger
documentation for details).
10. Control your services
If you need to stop or start a Windows service then you could
launch the Services applet (services.msc). But why bother? In
Windows Vista or 7 it's much quicker to do it from Task Manager.
Just click the Services tab, right-click the service you need,
and choose the Start or Stop option.
Be careful, though - stopping a critical Windows service can
result in your PC locking up immediately (and tinkering with
some third-party services is almost as serious). Don't try this
unless you know exactly what you're doing.
11. Restart Explorer
Have the taskbar and desktop disappeared for no apparent reason?
Explorer has probably crashed: press Ctrl+Shift+Esc and press
the Processes tab to check for yourself. If Explorer.exe isn't
listed then click File > New Task, type Explorer.exe and click
OK to restart it.
Or, if Explorer won't start, your system is generally trashed
and you'd like to reboot gracefully, then enter the command
shutdown -r and your system should restart.
12. Discover system information
Launching Task Manager and clicking the Performance tab will
reveal the total amount of RAM installed in your PC (check the
Total in the Physical Memory box).
And the Up Time figure in the System Box tells you how long it's
been since you last restarted Windows. The longer this is, the
more likely that resource leaks or other issues will begin to
cause problems. If your PC's been running for several days, and
you're noticing odd behaviour, then consider rebooting - it just
might help.
13. Monitor network utilisation
Click the Task Manager Networking tab and you'll see a graph
that tracks your current network use over time. This can be
useful if you've a network-hogging process that fires on a
regular basis, for instance, as you should see a spike on the
chart.
Click Options > Tab Always Active if you want Task Manager to
keep collecting network usage data, even when the tab isn't
displayed. Click View > Update Speed > Low to reduce the
sampling time, which allows you to squeeze more minutes of
activity onto a single screen. And click View > Network Adapter
History to choose exactly what you'd like to graph: the bytes
sent, received, or their total.
14. Talk to network users
If you're working on a networked PC then you may want to warn
anyone browsing your system that you're about to reboot, close a
process or do something else potentially dodgy. Click the Users
tab to see who else is connected to your PC right now. By
default you'll only see their user name - click Options > Show
Full Account Name to see their network PC name, too. Then
right-click a user and select Send Message to issue a warning,
or Disconnect to kick them off immediately.
15. Use something better
Learning the Task Manager basics is important, as they'll let
you diagnose problems on just about any PC. But the tool can
only take you so far, and for really in-depth information and
control over your applications you'll want to use something
better. Process Explorer is the best known alternative and an
excellent tool, but Process Hacker is also worth a look - if
anything, it's even more powerful.
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