The Windows 7 task manager has undergone some major renovations. In this article, we’ll look at the Processes tab.
The processes tab displays a list of all processes – not jut programs – running under Windows 7. Every program has at least one process, sometimes more. The operating system has several processes running. Background programs show up here as well.
A good example of a background program is a third party anti-virus software. In order to protect Windows 7 from a variety of threats, such software must be running all the time, monitoring program activities and network access to make sure that everything is behaving itself.
This shows up as a process in the task manager, often an obscurely named one. The task manager is full of obscurely named tasks.
When your computer becomes slow, it is often because too much is running, even if you only have one or two programs opened on the desktop.
Then you have to ask yourself: “where did all these processes come from? What do the belong to? Do I need them all? What happens if I stop this one or that one?”
In previous operating systems, this required extensive research. You could try googling the name of the process to try to find out what it is and what it does. This often does not turn up anything useful, or gives you a list of confusing possibilities.
The Windows 7 redesign has changes all that.
There is a new column on the processes tab called Description. In most cases, this contains the name of the program that started it.
This reveals exactly what each of those processes is doing on the list. It demystifies the list, and may help you remove processes that you know are not useful to you.
Any ideas?
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