Prioritise with Task Manager

You may sometimes find that certain processes hog CPU cycles to the detriment of other programs and general Windows performance. Examples that have reached the ears of this column include Lotus Notes, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer and some webcam software.

If you find Windows inexplicably slows down at times, it’s worth taking a look at the Task Manager. In Vista, press the Control, Alt and Delete keys all at the same time, then choose ‘Start Task Manager’; in XP, that key combination takes you straight there. The Applications tab shows you what you’ve got running on the desktop ­ that is, programs or folders you have opened yourself. If you turn to the Processes tab, however, you’ll get the whole story, with all background tasks, services, System Tray items and so on appearing in the Image Name column.

The next column lists the user who ‘owns’ the process. Normally this will either be you, System, Local or Network Service, but if you’ve got more than one user account on your PC and have switched users, rather than logging off, you will see what the last user left running if you tick the ‘Show processes from all users’ box.

The headings work like Windows folders, so you can click on one to set the order. The next two columns show CPU and Memory Usage; again, you can click on the headings to see, for example, the highest CPU usage. You’ll see the list rearrange itself as processes take more or fewer cycles, but if you see something persistently gobbling CPU time then that could be causing a problem. If it’s from another user, then you can force a log off from the Users tab, but they will lose unsaved data. A better way is to switch users, save any open files, close down running programs and log the user off. Log back in to your own account and you should find the problem solved.

If there’s still hogging from one of your own processes, then you can kill it by right-clicking on the item and choosing ‘End Process’. This is a drastic move, as the process might be essential or you may lose data, and you will get a warning to that effect. A better move is to change the priority of the process ­ – right-click on it, Set Priority, and choose Below Normal or Low.

There are a few useful tips with the Task Manager. First, if you’ve got the CPU column order selected, you may find the constant list rearrangement makes it hard to keep track of a particular process. If you go to the View menu, you’ll find you can set the Update Speed to low, which results in less frenetic rearrangement. From the same menu, you can also choose what information you want displayed in the columns. Most of this is not very useful to the end user, but it can help to have the Base Priority visible. You can also drag column headings horizontally to reorder them. There’s a little gotcha built in to the Task Manager. Double-clicking in the frame of a tab maximises it within the limits of the Task Manager window and all the other tabs disappear. Another double-click, however, restores the multi-tabbed view.

Changing the priority of a process in Task Manager only works for the current session. If you close and restart a program, it will be back with normal priority. It is possible, however, to run a program with low (or high) priority from a command prompt. Try, as an experiment, opening a command window and typing:

start /low notepad.exe

Notepad will open normally, but you’ll see in Task Manager that its priority is set to low, rather than normal. However, this doesn’t seem to work for all programs. Although it is theoretically possible to create shortcuts to run programs with non-standard priority – ­ for instance in the Startup folder – ­ this again is complicated and unreliable.