19-3LESSON 1 USING TASK MANAGERF19US01FIGURE 19-1 THE APPLICATIONS TAB...

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Lesson 1

Using Task Manager

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Figure 19-1 The Applications tab shows running applications and lets you terminate them.You can use the buttons on the Applications tab of the Task Manager dialog box tostop a program from running (End Task), to switch to a program and bring the pro-gram into the foreground (Switch To), and to start a program (New Task). At the bot-tom of the display, Task Manager shows you the number of processes that are currentlyrunning, the CPU usage, and the memory usage.

How to Monitor Processes

The Processes tab in the Task Manager dialog box (see Figure 19-2) lists each processthat is currently running on your computer that runs in its own address space, includingall applications and system services. Task Manager also allows you to end processes.

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Figure 19-2 You can select the columns that appear on the Processes tab.By default, the Processes tab shows you the processes, the users running each process,and the CPU and memory usage for each process that is running. You can add addi-tional performance measures to those that are shown by default on the Processes tab.To add performance measures, on the View menu, click Select Columns (refer to Fig-ure 19-2). Table 19-1 describes the columns that are displayed in Task Manager bydefault and some of the columns that can be added to the Processes tab.Table 19-1 Processes Tab ColumnsColumn DescriptionImage Name The name of the process, displayed by default.PID (Process Identifier) The numeric identifier assigned to the process while it is running.User Name The name of the user that the process is running under, displayed by default.CPU Usage The percentage of time the threads of the process used the processor since the last update, displayed by default. If a process is consuming a large amount of processor time over a long period (other than when an application is first starting or is performing a particularly intensive task), the process might be having trouble. Try closing the application (by using the Applications tab).CPU Time The total processor time (in seconds) used by the process since it was started.Memory Usage The amount of memory (in kilobytes) used by the process, displayed by default. This column is particularly useful for determining which applications are using memory because it displays the total amount of physical and virtual memory used by an application. If an application seems to be using too much memory, there might be a problem with the application. Try closing the application and restarting it (or restarting your computer and then restarting the application). Base Priority The order in which threads are scheduled for the processor. The base priority is not set by the operating system; it is set by the code. You can use Task Manager to change the base priority of processes. To change the base priority of a process, right-click the process and click Set Priority.Non-paged Pool The amount of memory (in kilobytes) that is used by a process; oper-ating system memory that is never paged (moved from memory) to disk.Paged Pool The amount of system-allocated virtual memory (in kilobytes) used by a process; virtual memory that can be paged to disk. Paging is the moving of infrequently used data from RAM to the paging file on the hard disk.