While many people find delving into the more intricate components of Windows intimidating, there is really no reason that everyone who owns a Windows based computer cannot use Windows Task Manager. Let us discover the different uses of the task manager and how it can help you.

Accessing the task manager is easily done with three keys, press the “alt” key, then while holding it press the “ctrl” key, while keeping these two keys held press the “delete” key and the task manager will pop up in a small box on your screen.

There are five different tabs in the task manager box, the first one is titles “Applications” and it comes up first by default when you open task manager. The applications tab manages just what you would think, applications that you currently have open, by right-clicking on individual applications you can switch them to the active application, bring them to the front of your screen, minimize or maximize them, end them or go to their process (covered under the “Processes” tab). The most beneficial of those actions tends to be “end task” which will shut down any inactive programs that are not cooperating.

The second tab “Processes” looks even more intimidating, there will be anywhere between 10 and 100 process shown in this tab at any given time, these are all the different services running on your computer, these differ from applications in that you might not be actually interfacing with them but they have to run to keep other applications running or to keep the system running, drivers for your monitor, printer and other peripherals are found in the processes section and if you can identify them then you can troubleshoot any problems you might be having. You can also set priority of different process here, if you want your photo editing program to use more of your CPU than your browser, find it in the processes, right click and set the priority higher, be careful with this though because your CPU only has a certain amount of work it can do before you will start having problems, try to only set one application at a time to high priority.

The “Performance” tab is a handy resource for seeing how much of your CPU and page file is being used. There are no options to configure here but you can check the performance tab if you are curious as to why a program that requires high resources is running slowly, it is possible that your CPU just isn’t up to the task!

The “Networking” tab is next and another place just to view information. The green graph will show you how much of your network is being utilized and the text box below it will show you which adapters are using how much of the network, this is a convenient way to find out which computer is hogging all the network resources.

Finally comes the user’s tab, again this tab is mainly informative but it also gives you the ability to logoff, disconnect, connect or send a message to different users. Probably one of the greatest benefits of it is having an easily accessible spot to view all the different user accounts on your computer.

Windows task manager is a fantastic tool covering all sorts of system functions that you can use on a daily basis, start utilizing it today by clicking “alt + ctrl + delete” and discover for yourself how you can use it to its greatest abilities.