How to Open the Task Manager in Windows 10
The Task Manager could be one of the most important tools to have when diagnosing a wide range of issues. So knowing how to open it quickly and easily is what this guide on how to open the Task Manager in Windows 10 is all about.
Opening the Task Manager
Using your keyboard: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
Alternative method – Using the Start Button’s contextual menu
- Right-click the right mouse button on the Start Menu Button.
- Left-click on the menu item ‘Task Manager’.
Some of the things the Task Manager can do
Processes list
The first tab, called ‘Processes’. Here you will be able to quickly see a full list of everything running on your computer.
Not only will you be able to see what’s running but you also have the ability to observe the CPU, Memory, disk, network, and GPU usage of each individual item.
Everything is happening in real-time, so you can see exactly what’s running right away.
Performance monitoring
You will have an overall usage on each component available in the ‘Performance’ tab.
By clicking on each component’s button in the left margin, you can see the real-time usage over on the right pane.
Just under the graph for real-time usage, more details are provided in real-time.
Application history
The ‘Application history’ tab looks specifically into your installed apps. Each one is listed in order of name, but you can order the list by clicking on the specific information you want.
For example, if you would like to see the app that has used the most CPU time, simply click on ‘CPU time’ to reorder the list accordingly.
Manage startup applications
The ‘Startup’ tab allows you to work with all the applications that run on startup.
You can see the publisher of the application alongside its name and the current state of whether it’s set to run on startup or not.
View running applications by user
Under the ‘Users’ tab, you will see a list of all users and the programs that are running by the user.
Click on the arrow next to the user to open the list of programs for the user.
You will also see columns dedicated to the CPU, memory, disk, network, and GPU usage for each program.
A detailed list of running programs
A simplified list can be seen of all the programs running from the executable file itself in the ‘Details’ tab.
It’s a handy way to see which program executable files that are and how much memory each one is using.
A list of services
The ‘Services’ tab includes a complete list of services that are available on your computer.
Apart from providing you with a description column, a status column tells you whether the service is running or not.
Conclusion
As you can see the Task Manager is a multi-functional tool that can help you manage many active features especially involving the performance of your computer.
So if you aren’t sure where to start when trying to assess the state of a computer before you begin to work on it, take a look here first.
If used correctly, it will provide you with lots of data in order to diagnose or fix something specific in Windows.
