One of the most frequent complaints I receive come from people who say that their computer is running slow. Somehow, I’m supposed to wave my magic wand and have it speed up to the level of a brand new machine powered by a new 6 core i7 CPU. While I might be exaggerating just a little bit, I am serious when I say that one of the biggest complaints about computer use is the speed of the machine. While it’s impossible to go through every possible cause for a sluggish machine (a big one is viruses and malware), I’m going to tell you how to find out what is running on your computer right now using Windows Task Manager.

In order to understand why a computer is running slow, the first thing to check is to see what programs (and how many of them) are running. Because a computer only has a limited amount of RAM (memory) to work with, once that memory gets filled up, Windows will start swapping it out to your hard drive using a program called “virtual memory.” By having too many programs running at a given time, you run the risk of overloading your machine and losing precious time as it slowly reads and writes to your hard drive rather than to its faster memory.

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Find Out What is Running Now

To find out what is running on your computer now, you can’t always trust the icons in your task bar and system tray. Many times, programs don’t have icons, but run at startup or are spawned by other programs. The best way to find out the status of your machine as it is now is through a Windows program called Task Manager. To run this program, press the CTRL, the ALT, and the DEL keys all at the same time. After doing this, a window will appear that has a link to click that starts Task Manager.

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Check Your Applications

Once Task Manager is running, you can see a list of applications that are running by clicking on the “Applications” tab. You can browse through the list and close the programs that you are not using right now. Do this by right-clicking on the application’s name and then selecting “End Task” from the context menu. The applications tab in Windows Task Manager is one of the best ways to find out what’s running on your computer.

Check Your Processes

When you’re done on the “Applications” tab, click on the “Processes” tab. Here, you will see all the processes that are running in your memory. If you’re new to computing, you may not want to mess with this list very much. Basically what you’re looking for is lines that have very high numbers in the “CPU” column. Sometimes when programs crash, they take up a lot of your computer’s CPU power and are identifiable by the number in this column. You can end processes much in the same way as you do applications in Task Manager by clicking “End Process.” Warning: closing the wrong process could leave your system unstable. Because of this, don’t mess with the processes until you are prepared to reboot your machine (all your data is saved). Ending applications and processes in Task Manager does not uninstall them: it only ends them for your current session. Uninstalling a program requires a processor found in your computer’s Control Panel, a process we can talk about later.

Bruce Tyson writes at the The TIW Blog

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