Take Control of Your Computer with Task Manager
This is a tip for Windows 10 and Windows 11
Task Manager is a fantastic way to find more information about your PC. The more you know about your computer, the more you’re in charge. If your computer is freezing or hesitating, you can use Task Manager to pinpoint the processes and programs that are hogging your system resources. You can use Task Manager to stop programs from running at Windows startup and stop services from running and open the Services.msc app.
There are many ways to open Task Manager, here are a few:
- Right-click on your taskbar and click on Task Manager (Windows 10 only)
- Press the Ctrl+Shift+Esc keys
- Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete then click on Task Manager
- Windows Key + R. Type TASKMGR and press Enter
- Right-click on the Start button and choose Task Manager from the menu.
After you open Task Manager, you may have to click “More details” to see all the details in Task Manager, and so you can follow along with this tip.
After clicking “More details” you’ll see Task Manager in all its glory.
Above & Below: Task Manager running on Windows 10
You can check your computer’s CPU and RAM usage, by clicking on the Performance tab. You can check your startup programs by clicking on the Startup tab. You can check your Windows services and open Services.msc from Windows 10’s Task Manager by clicking the relevant items at the top.
Task Manager running on Windows 11.
Windows 11’s Task Manager is designed differently than Windows 10’s Task Manager. The labels are on the left instead of the top. You can check your computer’s CPU and RAM usage, by clicking on”Performance” in the menu on the left. You can check your startup programs by clicking on Startup apps in the menu.
You can also check the status of Windows services. You can stop and start services by clicking Services in the Windows 11 Task Manager menu. You can even open Services.msc app from there.
Another thing you can do with Task Manager in Windows 10 and/or Windows 11, is to view a list of processes running on your system. You can sort the list by name, by CPU or RAM usage, and more from highest to lowest or lowest to highest usage.
Whether you’re using Windows 10 or Windows 11, just click the column title at the top to order the list from highest to lowest and click again to order the list from lowest to highest. It’s easy!
And whether you are using Windows 10 or Windows 11, when you look at your list of running processes, it may look like you have a lot of processes running in the background, even if you don’t have a lot of programs running. This is normal, so don’t worry.
Stop the programs and processes from jumping around
You may notice that the list of processes “jumps” around as you’re looking at it. That’s because Windows is constantly refreshing the list. Here’s how to stop that whether you are using Windows 10 or Windows 11. Just hold down the CTRL key, That’s it. As long as you hold down the CTRL key the processes will stop jumping around. This makes it a lot easier to pinpoint problems and/or “End” the offending processes.
Take Control of Your Computer with Task Manager
Task Manager is a tool you can use to learn more about your computer, diagnose problems, clear up bottlenecks, stop processes from running, and make your computer run better. If you familiarize yourself with the Windows Task Manager, you’ll learn a lot about your computer and you’ll be able to find out in a hurry what may be slowing down your PC.