NT 4.0's Task Manager - The Best Combination

Windows Tips & Secrets
1998 PLATINUM technology, Inc.

Reprinted with permission from Platinum Technology, Inc.

There has never been a quick and easy way to monitor Windows NT. Sure, the Task List is available, but it only shows applications currently in memory. What about NT services? Of course, you can access the Services icon in control panel to see which are running, but how much RAM is each one consuming at any one time? You could try Performance Monitor. It shows memory usage, but which of the hundreds of counters should you use? Microsoft combines the best of all these tools into one new feature Task Manager. Right-click the task bar and choose Task Manager to launch this useful tool. You'll find that it has three tabs: Applications, Processes and Performance.

Applications

This tab shows applications in memory and their status. The status varies from Running to Not Responding. Regardless of an application's status, you may select it at any time and click End Task to terminate it. This requests the application to close itself; but, if the app refuses to close gracefully, Task Manager will step in and forcibly close it and all associated processes.

Performance

This tab provides a detailed view of the CPU and memory usage. You can tell if your CPU is a bottleneck or if you don't have enough RAM. The number of processes and threads that NT has running is also displayed. The display updates about once every second. You can change this update interval by clicking View Update Speed. To get the most current data, change the speed to High and the display updates about three times per second. To keep the longest history of performance, change the update speed to Slow, which updates the display once every three seconds.

Processes

This tab shows all .EXE files in RAM, including applications and services. It also shows the amount of CPU time and memory each process is consuming. You can forcibly close applications (as in the Applications tab), but in this tab you can also terminate services! Find an NT machine that is not a vital part of your network, close all open applications and try this:

• Launch Task Manager and click Processes.

• Click Explorer.exe, then End Process.

• Click [Yes] on the warning screen and you just terminated the interface!

• To get Explorer back, select Applications, (if you accidentally closed Task Man, press [CTRL]+[ALT]+[DEL] and choose it again), click New Task, type EXPLORER and hit [Enter].

In Processes, you can also change the priority of a process. Windows NT uses priority levels to divide CPU time among processes. For example, if WINWORD.EXE has a priority level of eight and EXCEL.EXE has a priority level of four, Word can be granted more CPU time. Changing the priority level can greatly aid an application's performance by instructing the CPU to run one program's code before another's.

Windows NT allows four priority levels to be set: low, normal, high, and real-time. Low runs the application at a lower priority, specifically level four. This is useful for large tasks running in the background because with a low priority, they won't take away from other applications' responsiveness. Normal is level eight and is the default. High is level 13 and runs the application at a level equal to some services. This makes the program very responsive, but can slow other processes dramatically. Real-time is priority level 24. Never set this! This level can cause your machine to stop responding completely. To set a priority level on a process, go to Processes, right-click the executable, then choose Set Priority.

Remember that this will set the priority level for just this session. When the application is closed and launched again, it will return to its original level.

Additional Information

For more information, go to the Platinum Technology, Inc. web site at: https://www.cai.com/.

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