Task Manager, which was previously known as Microsoft Windows Task Manager, is a component of the Windows operating system (OS) that helps administrators and end users monitor, manage and troubleshoot tasks. A task is a basic unit of programming that an OS controls. In the context of Task Manager, a task might be an application, a Windows process or a background process.
Task Manager provides information about hardware resource usage and performance as it relates to the system's individual apps and processes, including services. The information includes usage details about the system's CPU, memory, disk, network and, in some cases, graphics processing unit (GPU) resources.
IT professionals can use Task Manager to quickly identify system bottlenecks that might be responsible for performance or stability problems before they deploy more comprehensive or intrusive troubleshooting tools. Task Manager can help them spot unusual or unexpected behavior that could indicate malware or other unauthorized software.
Task Manager also lets administrators terminate applications and processes, adjust processing priorities and set processor affinity for best computer performance. In addition, they can view information about the users currently logged onto a system, as well as disconnect any of those users when troubleshooting logon or connectivity issues.
Task Manager has been included with the Windows OS since the release of Windows NT. Over the years, Microsoft has continuously updated and improved the product, steadily adding more features. As a result, administrators and power users can now do much more with the tool than they could with the original version.
Windows includes a variety of methods for launching Task Manager, including the following:
When users first launch Task Manager, they might be presented with a compact version that lists only the currently running applications. This version doesn't list any Windows or background processes. Figure 1 shows the compact version with four open apps: Calculator, Clock, Notepad and Paint. If no applications are open, the screen displays only a brief message stating that there are no running apps.
For each listed app, a user can perform operations such as closing the app, going to the app's file location, opening its properties or searching online for information about the app. To access these functions, the user right-clicks the app and chooses the appropriate option from the context menu. Not all the menu options are available to all apps, however. For example, the Calculator app doesn't let the user go to the app's file location or open its properties.
When Task Manager is in compact view, users can click the More details option at the bottom of the window to expand the interface. The expanded view provides access to all the available functionality in Task Manager. Power users and administrators will likely spend the majority of their time here when using Task Manager. Figure 2 shows Task Manager when it's first opened in the expanded view.
Here the Processes tab is active, which is automatically set as the default tab. However, a user can set a different tab as the default. Once a user has expanded the interface, the expanded view persists whenever they relaunch Task Manager, unless they return to the compact view before closing Task Manager. To return to the compact view, the user can click the Fewer details option at the bottom of the window.
Each tab in the expanded view shows different information about the system's applications, Windows processes and background processes. However, the tabs can vary depending on the OS. Figure 2 shows Task Manager on a Windows 11 system, although the utility works much the same in a Windows 10 environment. On either system, the user interface (UI) includes the following seven tabs:
Most of the tabs present data in a tabular format, much like the Processes tab shown in Figure 2. On any of these tabs, users can sort the data by a specific column in either ascending or descending order. In addition, many of these tabs provide extra columns of information that users can choose to display. They can also access options related to each listed process.
One tab that stands out from the others is the Performance tab. This tab provides real-time visualizations that show the performance of different hardware resources. For example, Figure 3 shows performance information about the system's CPU.
Like Figure 2, this figure is also specific to Task Manager in Windows 11. However, the Task Manager UI in Windows Server is similar to both Windows 10 and Windows 11 except that it doesn't include the App history tab or Startup tab.
Although Task Manager has been improved over the years, it's still only a basic tool. It doesn't include advanced monitoring or management capabilities, such as alerting or comprehensive reporting. For these types of features, IT teams should choose more in-depth tools, such as Microsoft Process Explorer, which is part of the Sysinternals Process Utilities suite. Process Explorer provides more detailed information about running processes and offers more comprehensive visualizations and in-depth reports.
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14 Nov 2023