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CHAPTER 3
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MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP
Task Manager and then click End Task. The application may close right
away, or you may receive a system notification that “This program is not
responding.” Click End Now, or wait for Windows to lose patience and close
the application for you.
Sometimes it’s not an application that goes awry but a system process.
This often happens with poorly-written device drivers or services related to
hardware that are running around, listening for a response, but not smart
enough to figure out that the hardware isn’t responding. Usually when this
happens, the CPU usage (found on the Performance tab) rockets up to
100%. Click the Processes tab and find the process that is consuming all or
nearly all of the CPU cycles. Click the process and then click End Process;
most of the time, this is sufficient to put down the misbehaving process.
There are times, however, when the process won’t be or can’t be killed.
Unlike UNIX-based systems, there is no way to log on as root and have ulti-
mate control over what happens with the system; Windows protects some
processes even if you think they should be ended. A third-party program
called Process Explorer works much like Task Manager but provides far
more detail about running processes (such as file system handles) than aver-
age users would ever need. But it does one thing that Task Manager doesn’t:
It lets you end processes, any processes, even ones that Windows thinks you
shouldn’t. For this reason it’s a great tool to have in your toolbox, and is a
worthy replacement for, or addition to, Task Manager. Best of all, it’s free-
ware. You can find Process Explorer at www.sysinternals.com.
Improve startup with MSCONFIG
When Windows XP boots it starts a number of services and applications so
that the Windows environment is configured for your use. These services
and applets may or may not be needed; many of them are enabled out of the
box, while others are added by applications or device managers you install.
Microsoft provides a program called the System Configuration Utility, or
MSCONFIG that lets you determine which services and applications run at
startup. You can see which programs are starting, where they reside on your
system, and enable or disable them by clicking a check box. This makes it
Inside Scoop
Because Task Manager displays CPU usage and helps identify misbehaving applica-
tions, I put a shortcut to taskmgr.exe in my Startup folder. That way information
about my system and misbehaving applications is just one click away.
Inside
Scoop
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