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Using Windows with Task Manager effectively to keep away frustrations…

Getting familiar with Windows task manager can solve many problems and keep your frustrations away.
It may take some time to get familiar with Windows Task Manager & processes, but it is definitely worth it considering the benifits you can derive.
Once you are familiar with the task manager, you will develop an intution to predict intrusions or other malicious attacks. Remember it will take a some hit and trial with the windows task manager to be able to use it to advantage.

Windows system utility, Task Manager’ displays the
tasks or processes currently running on your computer. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to open Task Manager.
The Task Manager windows popups (the only popup I love), it lists the
applications currently running on your computer.
A single application may actually consist of several running
processes, and many programs that run in the background are
not listed (a few of these programs icons are seen in the System Tray).

The Processes displayed in the task bar are all the
processes currently running on your computer. This can be
very useful for monitoring your system and you should make it a habit to peep into your system to identify malicious or other harmful processes running in the windows rask manager.

The process tab displays information about the processor useage and memory
usage of each process. The problem lies in being able to identify intrusive
processes.

list of some processes you may see in
Task Managers Processes list.

System - The Windows System Process
SMSS.EXE - Session Manager Subsystem
CSRSS.EXE - Client Server Runtime Subsystem
WinLOGON.EXE - The Windows Logon process
SERVICES.EXE - Services Control Manager
LSASS.EXE - Local Security Authentication Server Service
svchost.exe - Service Host
spoolsv.exe - The print spooler service
explorer.exe - Windows Explorer
TASKMGR.EXE - The Task Manager
regsvc.exe - Remote Registry Service
System Idle Process

System Idle Process - is another name for the
time when Windows is idling, doing nothing. With hundreds of processes that run on a computer,
you will find names of other processess that are
not listed above. For a list of well known processes,
go to ‘google and search ‘windows task manager pocesses litutilites list’

There are many security risk processes. Whenever you see your computer behaving unexpected slow or somewhat unexpected, press cntl-alt-del and look for some stranger processes.
Check it against the list or search google with the unfamiliar process name. You will find complete details for normal and malicious processes.

If it is a malicious program, just delete it.

Task Manager can also be helpful if it’s
running slow. The Performance tab displays running graphs
of your computers CPU and memory usage. If the CPU usage
seems to be running over 75% percen, or if the memory usage is higher than the physical memory, you can shut down some applications or processes.

On the Process tab, you can identify processes that are
consuming a larger processor time. Click twice on the CPU
column heading to sort the CPU column so the processes
hogging the most CPU time on top. You can sort the
“Mem Usage” column the same way.

Task Manager can also be used for troubleshooting for situations when an
application freezes up. You can open Task Manager and shut down the application. If the entire system freezes up, you
can use Task Manager to shut down a process that is hogging
all the CPU time or memory.

If you spend some time monitoring your computer with task
Manager, eventually you will become familiar with the
processes that commonly run. Then, when you see an
unfamiliar process, you can do a little investigation to
make sure it’s not a virus. For example, if you see
msblast.exe in the process list, your computer is infected
with the Blaster virus. You might be able to detect and
eliminate a new virus before an antivirus update is available.

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