Advanced Windows 11 tips: Task Manager

IN THIS FIRST TUTORIAL in a new series showcasing how to get more from your Windows 11 setup, we’re starting with a detailed look at what’s going on under the hood of your machine. You may not currently care that, behind the scenes, your Windows installation is performing a complicated juggling routine involving a tangled web of applications, services, processes, threads, and handles, but we suspect that outlook will change the moment your system starts to slow down, become non-responsive, or prone to crashing.

Knowledge is power, and there are two primary tools that can help you peer behind the scenes to determine what’s going on, identify areas of concern, and even in some cases, restore non-responsive applications to life without force-quitting them and losing hours of unsaved work. The first, Task Manager, is built into Windows itself and has all the tools you need to resolve most problems, but if you need an even deeper dive into your PC’s software innards, then Process Explorer is the tool for you.

Armed with these tools, you’ll discover how to monitor and free up system resources, track down troublesome processes, and generally keep your PC running a bit more smoothly. So, without further ado, let’s pull back the curtain… –NICK PEERS

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QUICK-FIRE ORIENTATION

Let’s start with a quick tour of Task Manager’s key features. Step one is opening it—the quickest way is to learn a new three-fingered salute if you haven’t already: Ctrl + Shift + Esc (save Ctrl + Alt + Delete for times when Windows won’t respond). You can also access Task Manager in Windows 10 by rightclicking the Taskbar, or in Windows 11 by right-clicking the Start button and choosing Task Manager.

>> The basic Task Manager view is a simple list of running apps, so in the unlikely event you haven’t already gone beyond this, click ‘More details’ to access a more reassuringly packed seventabbed dialog packed with useful info. The annotation provides a quick overview of what each section does, but let’s take a deep dive and see what each section can provide in terms of useful diagnostic info and troubleshooting tools.

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SEE WHAT’S RUNNING

The Processes tab is where you’ll get a detailed overview of what’s running on your PC. It’s split into three sections: Apps lists the programs you’ve launched via File Explorer—to see what processes each app is running, click the > next to its entry to expand the list. In most cases, there may only be a single process listed, or you may simply see multiple threads with the same name as the app itself, but others may provide more useful details. For example, Word will display a separate entry for each document you’ve opened, while Microsoft Edge goes even further in identifying each separate subprocess [ Image A].

>> Beneath Apps lies ‘Background processes’, which lists all third-party programs running in the background. Again, some can be expanded, and these may provide more pertinent information about the process, or at least which program launched it. For example, expand ‘Anti-malware Service Executable’ to discover that it is part of Microsoft Defender’s Antivirus component.

>> The final section is ‘Windows processes’, which refers to core processes related to Windows, including all running Services. The latter can also be viewed via their own dedicated tab, but one of the benefits of using Processes is that you can review each individual process’s resource usage, with columns covering CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network. Click a column header to quickly sort the list by which process is taking up the most resources.

>> To find out more about a process, right-click it and choose Properties > Details tab or choose ‘Search

online’ to perform a Bing-powered search for both the process name and its underlying filename. If you’re troubleshooting an app, choose ‘Create a dump file’ to create a file you can share with a professional or review yourself using the free WinDbg Preview (install this through the Microsoft Store).

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RECOVER FROZEN APPS

One major use of Task Manager is, of course, ending non-responsive programs or processes to free up your PC. You’ll be aware that such processes are usually highlighted and selecting the process and clicking the ‘End task’ button (sometimes more than once) is usually enough to end it. One exception is File Explorer (or Windows Explorer as it’s listed)— when you select this, ‘End task’ is replaced by a ‘Restart’ button, which does what it says on the tin.

>> But what if you’re about to potentially lose a load of data because you’ve been lax about saving documents? With a bit of luck, you may be able to recover the program by identifying and terminating the exact thread holding things up, which may be enough to coax the app back to life without crashing.

>> To do this, right-click the errant process and choose ‘Go to details’ to switch to the Details tab where you’ll find processes are listed alphabetically with lots more potentially useful info: their status (running or suspended), the user who launched them (typically you, SYSTEM or a SERVICE) and a PID (Process ID).

>> To try and free up a non-responding thread from here, right-click it again and choose ‘Analyze wait chain’. This will list any threads that are using or waiting to use resources being used elsewhere [ Image B]. Ending the thread may be enough to free up the original process— we’ve done this a few times in Firefox when an individual tab has become non-responsive, for example.

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OPTIMIZE APP PERFORMANCE

There are some other handy options under the Details tab—you can alter thread priorities here, which in turn can stop particular processes from taking over your PC and slowing everything else down. This is more an issue with low-powered PCs (in which