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Task Manager is a historical and current representation of the usage of resources on your computer. Task Manager can be opened two ways. First, hold the "Ctrl"+"Alt"+"Delete" buttons down. A screen is shown with a list of options. One of the buttons is labeled "Task Manager." Click it and the window opens in front of the applications.
The second way to open Task Manager is by right clicking the task bar on the lower portion of the Windows screen. One of the menu options shown is "Task Manager." Click the menu item and Task Manager opens. -
Several tabs are on Task Manager. Although the window is usually used to close frozen applications, these tabs also display historical data for troubleshooting. For instance, click the "Performance" tab. These figures show the CPU performance and the memory usage. For slow computers, a CPU spike may be shown. Computers usually begin to lose performance when the CPU goes about 80 percent. Watching the graph of the CPU statistics can help you troubleshoot when applications slow down performance. Included in this tab is also memory usage. If your computer is low in memory, this tab may indicate the need for an upgrade.
The "Processes" and "Applications" tabs show you what applications and processes are running. Applications are different than processes. The applications are the programs you have chosen to run on the machine. Processes are the services and invisible programs as well as the applications running on the machine. Some processes run in the background. For instance, when you run a networked computer, network processes run in this tab even though they are not visible on the Windows task bar. Processes and applications can be stopped by highlighting one of the icons and clicking the "End Task" button on the applications window and the "End Process" on the processes tab.
