How do I start Task Manager and what is it for?

With the advent of the very first multitasking operating systems (OS), each user sought to find out exactly how many programs and applications are currently running on his computer. Developers of the leading OS almost simultaneously began to include in their products a utility that allows you to view not only all the processes running on the computer at a given moment, but also to see how much the processor is currently loaded and what amount of RAM is occupied with solving current tasks.

Inclusion of the task manager (this name was received by this utility in the family of operating systems from the company "Microsoft") should not take much time. Therefore, it was carried out by pressing a certain key combination. Even a novice user should not have to puzzle over how to start the task manager on his PC - this is the condition that the company's management placed before its programmers.

Similar tasks were faced by developers of other operating systems. Nowadays on Mac OS you can find a utility called "Activity Monitor" (literally its name can be translated as "System Monitoring"). Prior to the tenth version of the "operating system" from Apple, this utility was called "Process Viewer". In the operating systems of the UNIX family, there are also a number of similar utilities. Depending on the OS version for this purpose, the "Top" or "PS" programs are used, as well as several graphical shells ("KTop", "System Activity", "System Monitor" and others) written for various environments of the GNU / Linux.

In our time, the question of how to start the task manager, often even a child can answer. In the operating systems of the Bill Gates company, several simple key combinations are traditionally used to invoke this utility.

In earlier versions of Windows, to call Windows Task Manager - this is the name of this utility in English versions of the OS - the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Esc was used. Then for a long time the task manager could be started with the combination "Ctrl + Alt + Del" (this combination of keys appears in many anecdotes and funny stories about "computer programmers" and programmers).

Users can not think about how to launch the task manager in the latest versions of Windows, or more specifically, on Windows Vista and Windows 7 - it's a bit of a forgotten combination of keys "Ctrl + Shift + Esc" for the last few years, so And the traditional combination "Ctrl + Alt + Del" (in the window that appears, just select the appropriate item and the task manager will start up).

Not active in use among the masses, but still common among "advanced" PC users, the way to start the task manager without the above mentioned combinations, is also suitable for other users. Simply enough to create a shortcut to the startup file "taskmgr.exe" on the desktop (it is responsible for the start of the task manager) and you can call this indispensable utility by double clicking directly on this shortcut. For all those who do not want to clutter the desktop with another shortcut, it will be enough to access the context menu of the taskbar or type "taskmgr.exe" on the command line. The result will be the same - "Windows Task Manager" will be launched.

After we have analyzed the most popular ways how to start the task manager, let's take a closer look at what functions this utility performs. The Applications tab allows you to end an unnecessary program or simply switch to the required application. The next tab "Processes" allows you to see all the processes running on the computer and allows you to work with them (change priority, complete, etc.) in real time. The tabs "Performance" and "Network" (the latter appears only if the computer is connected to the network) will show the user some simple graphs, which show the statistics of the PC. In Administrator mode, there is also the Users tab. It allows you to delete an existing one or add one more user to the OS. In the last two versions of "Windows", the "Services" tab appeared in the task manager. It contains information about all operating system services.

After reading this article, now even an inexperienced PC user will know how to launch Task Manager.