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Using Task Manager - Part 1

© Tracey Kirkpatrick-Pritchett

Task Manager is an NT system utility that provides system information and control over system processes. It's been around in all flavors of Windows since Windows 3.x, although until NT 4.0 it was used primarily to end errant applications. With the advent of NT 4.0, however, it has matured into a useful performance monitor, and for some of us, an application launcher. All NT users should be familiar with Task Manager to get the most out of their operating system.

Launching Task Manager

To launch Task Manager, you right-click the Task Bar and select "Task Manager". In previous NT versions, you could use the key combination CTRL-ESC, but now that just brings up the Start Menu. The new key combination is CTRL-SHIFT-ESC. Furthermore, the three-finger salute (CTRL-ALT-DEL) will bring up a dialog with an option to launch Task Manager. Finally, you can launch it by running "taskman.exe", which is in your {systemroot}\system32 folder.

If you'd like to have Task Manager keyed to CTRL-ESC again, you can edit the following Registry subkey (the value "Taskman" shouldn't exist, so you'll have to "Add Value" Taskman of "Type" REG_SZ and set the "Value" to Taskman.exe):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \Software \Microsoft \Windows NT \Current Version \Winlogin \Taskman=Taskman.exe

Using The Processes Tab

While the first tab, Applications, lists your currently running applications, the second tab, Processes, lists all running executables (including the applications from the first tab, although the executable's file name is used instead of it's "display name", for example, "winword.exe" instead of "Microsoft Word for Windows").

You can select each listed process, and right-click on it to bring up a context menu that allows you to End Process or Set Priority. When you become familiar with what processes your system normally runs, you will be able to detect abnormalities here, and end any processes that shouldn't be there. For example, if you see a process "netscape.exe", but "Netscape" isn't listed on your Task Bar or the Applications tab, and you know it shouldn't be running, you can close it from here by selecting End Process. A common culprit, if you run 16-bit apps, is "wowexec.exe" with no [16-bit] app listed under it (indented-style). However, you shouldn't go about Ending Processes unless you're sure a process shouldn't be running.

You can determine which data fields you'd like shown for the processes by selecting menu item View\Select Columns. As a rule, I always keep Memory Usage selected, and Virtual Memory Size as well. These two fields tell you approximately the amount of memory each shown process is using. On this tab, "Memory Usage" isn't the entire memory consumption of the process, but only the amount of physical RAM that process is using. However, with NT, an application may be using much more Virtual Memory (i.e., the paging file) than physical memory, so if you're gauging memory at all, you have to have both these fields selected.

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