Inside the NT 4.0 Task Manager

Simplicity at its best

Funny how the simplest things can sometimes get me the most excited. InWindows NT 4.0, one seemingly small feature has my attention because it can makea big difference in making NT easy to use and administer.

If you've used NT 4.0, you probably like the new user interface, improvedperformance, or other obvious features. I like those features, too, but the newfeature that most caught my eye is the vastly improved Task Manager. TaskManager can help you manage NT applications, processes, and performance.Understanding how to use this tool will help you keep NT humming along smoothly.

Running Task Manager
You probably won't find Task Manager on any NT 4.0 menus, so I'll start bydescribing a few ways to run it. One place you'll see a reference to TaskManager is in the NT Security dialog box. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the NTSecurity dialog box, and click Task Manager. You can use Task Manager to shutdown applications that aren't responding. Microsoft put Task Manager on the NTSecurity dialog box because the almost natural response to an application that'snot responding is the three-finger salute.

To start Task Manager another way, right-click on the taskbar. Task Manageris an option on the pop-up menu.

The name of the Task Manager program is taskmgr.exe, so you can use the Runoption from the Start menu to bring up the program. You can also, of course,create a shortcut to the program on the desktop.

When you start Task Manager, you'll see a window similar to Screen 1, andyou'll notice that Task Manager adds a graphical CPU utilization monitor to thetaskbar notification area.

Let me show you how to use Task Manager to manage applications.

Managing Applications
Task Manager has three tabs: Applications, Processes, and Performance. InScreen 1, I have three active applications. One of them, Session A - [24 * 80](a communications application), has crashed. The application's status is NotResponding. Usually, the application's status is Running.

To end this application, I can select the application and click the EndTask button at the bottom of the frame. Another dialog box will usually pop upto say that the application didn't respond to the End Task request. This dialogbox asks whether I want to give the application another five seconds to respond,end the application, or cancel the request. Unless you have a reason to thinkthat the application will end in another five seconds, click End Application toend the task.

From this dialog box, you can also access the Switch To and New Taskbuttons. New Task brings up a dialog box from which you can start a newapplication. You can also start a new application from the menu bar orright-click in the frame's open area to get a pop-up menu with an option tostart an application.

From here, you can do other things. If you double-click an application inthis frame, the system will switch to that application. Or you can right-clickan application to see the menu in Screen 2. From this pop-up menu, you cancontrol the application in various ways. You can switch to the task, bring thetask to the front, minimize or maximize the task, end the task, or go to theprocess associated with the task. In the example in Screen 2, the Cascade, TileHorizontally, and Tile Vertically menu items are unavailable. Availability ofthese options depends on which other applications are open and what their stateis. For example, if all the applications are minimized, you can't access theMinimize menu item.

Managing Processes
Another class of active programs that run under NT is processes. Anapplication has one or more processes, but not all processes have anapplication.

If you click the Processes tab in the Task Manager dialog box, you'll see awindow similar to Screen 3. This screen shows a list of the active processes andsome variable performance information about them. In this case, one of theprocesses is highlighted. That's because from the menu shown in Screen 2, Iselected the Go To Process menu item. Choosing this menu option shows whichprocess is associated with an application.

You can end a process with the End Process button at the bottom of theframe. However, be careful when doing so. Some of the processes shown, such asservices.exe, are necessary for NT to operate. Other processes, such asrpcss.exe, support networking functions. Before you end a process, try to figureout what might be causing the problem with the process. Also look for other waysto end the process, such as ending an application or a service through theControl Panel.

From the Processes tab, you can also change the priority of processes byright-clicking an application and selecting Set Priority. You'll see a windowsimilar to Screen 4. The current priority appears with a dot next to one of thelisted priorities. To change the priority, simply select the priority you want.

Usually, you won't need to change the priority of processes. But supposeyou have a communications process that can't complete because the process isn'tgetting enough CPU to keep the communications link going. In this case, you cantemporarily change the process's priority to High to get the communications taskto complete successfully.

You can alter the information in the Processes view frame by selectingView, Select Columns. That menu item brings up a dialog box similar to Screen 5.From this dialog box, you select what performance information to show for eachprocess in Screen 4. You can size each field in Screen 4 by dragging theboundaries of the column headings, and you can click the column heading for afield to reorder the list. If you want to see the processes listed in the orderin which they're using the CPU, click the CPU column's heading. By clicking theheading again, you can list the processes in descending CPU utilization order.This screen updates the performance data at intervals that you set from theUpdate Speed menu item under View.

Monitoring Performance
Clicking the Task Manager's Performance tab, brings up a window similar toScreen 6. This screen shows a great deal of information about your system'sperformance. Starting at the top, you see two graphical depictions of CPUutilization. The bar scale on the left shows current CPU utilization. The graphon the right shows CPU utilization history; the history depends on your settingsfor the update speed rate and the size of the Task Manager window.

The next section shows memory utilization. Similar to the CPU utilizationinformation, the left side shows current memory utilization, and the graph onthe right side shows historical memory utilization. From the CPU graph, youmight wonder, "What the heck was he doing to use so much CPU?"

In this case, I know the answer: I'm using Microsoft Word. I don't type sofast that the application has a difficult time keeping up with me; automaticspelling correction and automatic text replacement are using most of that CPUtime. The application constantly watches what I'm typing and keeps busy fixingall my typos.

The Processes tab, shown in Screen 4, confirms my suspicion. The CPU Timecolumn shows the total amount of CPU time that each process has used. If I rankthat data in descending order, I see that the CPU time winword.exe is using issecond on the list, after idle time on my system. The System Idle Process is theamount of time my system has spent doing nothing.

Back to Screen 6: The four frames at the bottom of the window detail how mysystem is using memory. You can see how many handles, threads, and processesexist. You can also see the availability and use of physical memory, kernelmemory, and commit charge memory in kilobytes.

The Physical Memory frame displays the total physical memory installed andconfigured in the system. In my system, I have 32MB: the system has about 10MBavailable and is using about 8MB for file caching.

Kernel memory is memory the operating system is using. In this frame, thetotal is just a bit more than 8MB, also broken down into paged and nonpagedmemory. Paged memory is memory the system can temporarily swap to disk if theoperating system needs that memory.

Finally, the Commit Charge frame shows how much memory is allocated toapplication and system programs. This frame shows the total memory currently inuse, the maximum available, and the peak usage since Task Manager started. Thevalues in the Memory Usage section of the Task Manager status bar at the bottomof the screen correspond with the values for the commit charge memory currentlyin use and for the memory limit.

A Powerful Tool
The new Task Manager lets you manage NT tasks and processes and basic systemperformance. However, Task Manager is by no means a replacement for PerformanceMonitor (Perfmon). Perfmon gives you much more detailed information and can showperformance information for different subsystems. (For more information onPerfmon's capabilities, see "The Windows NT Performance Monitor," page155. So, if Task Manager spots a performance problem, use Perfmon to dig furtherand figure out what's going on. The new Task Manager is a hot new tool in anadministrator's arsenal.