Fix speed problems with Windows Task Manager

When a Windows PC turns from a speed demon into a sloth it can be incredibly frustrating. Simple programs take an age to load and everything else slows to a crawl. However, there is usually something you can do about it.

A sudden bout of sluggish performance is often caused by one or more applications using too much of your PC’s computing resources. We are going to explore the Windows Task Manager, explaining what it does and how you can use it to fix performance problems.

Managing tasks
Task Manager is a powerful yet easy-to-use tool included with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Providing detailed information on exactly what your computer is up to at any given time, it lets you diagnose problems as well as close applications or processes that have got out of control.

This could be of use when your PC has slowed to a crawl but it can also be used to monitor areas such as memory usage over a period of time. If Task Manager reveals that nearly all the computer’s memory is being used, it could be time for an upgrade.

Task Manager can be opened in a few ways. In both XP and Vista, the key combination of Ctrl, Shift and Escape will launch it (hold down Ctrl and Shift and then tap Escape), as will right-clicking an empty portion of the Taskbar and selecting Task Manager.

In XP, pressing Ctrl, Alt and Delete will also launch Task Manager; in Vista, this will first take you to new screen where Task Manager is on a list of options.

The Task Manager window is home to many tabs. We are going to stick to the basics, concentrating on the Applications, Processes and Performance tabs.

The Applications tab lists all the programs active on the PC. Beside each entry is the application’s status, usually either Running (good) or Not R esponding (not so good).

The Processes tabs takes things a step further by displaying what tasks created by programs and Windows are placing demands on the computer’s hardware resources. Here, you will see tasks, know as processes, related to programs listed in the Applications tab and any running in the background.

There are five columns in the Processes tab. The first, Image Name, details the name of the process. These names are not always self-explanatory, but in Vista a glance at the Description column will often shed some light on it. XP users do not have a Description column. The CPU and Memory columns are particularly useful as they can identify memory-sapping processes.

The CPU column indicates what percentage of the processor’s time is being used by each task. All the tabs within Task Manager can be ordered by any of the available columns. To see all the processes ordered by their CPU usage, click once at the top of the CPU column; a second click will reverse the order. The list will update itself, with entries shifting up and down depending on how much they are using the processor.

With the Task Manager window still visible, launch an application such as Windows Media Player. As the program loads, notice a new entry appears near the top of the list of processes with a CPU usage that’s higher than most others. Once the program finishes loading, it will then drop down the list.

Most of the time, an entry called ‘System Idle Process’ will be at the top of the list. This simply indicates how much of the processing power is available to be used by other processes.

A computer that has recently launched into Windows and is running no other programs, for example, may have a System Idle Process with a CPU usage of 99 per cent, because there’s nothing going on.