When customers call me and tell me something is wrong with their computer, i always ask them what is happening?
Most times it is even hard for the customer to explain what is going wrong. Most people know something is not right, but they cant quite put their finger on what it is.
Whether your computer is running slow, certain applications not started when requested or you think something weirder is happening with your computer, there is a simple way to find out a little more information which can help you repairs your computer faster, cheaper and maybe sometimes even yourself.
Lets Talk About the Task Manger
Every time a computer starts up or runs in the background, the process of it running is shown (even in the background) in the Task Manager.
The task manger can tell you what is running in the background of your computer, how much hard drive resources it is using, how much processing power, memory etc.
There will be many different programs running in the background of your computer, maybe even hundreds so it might be hard to identify something that is not suppose to be there, but there are certain things to look out for.
How to Access the Task Manager
Accessing the task manger is very simple. You can either right click on your Taskbar at the bottom of your computer and left click on Task Manger link ot you can hit control alt delete and select task manger there also.
If your computers operating system is corrupt or there are other problems like you are infected with a virus, you might not have the options or they might not execute when you clock on them.
What to Look for in Taskbar
So now you have your Taskbar up and you can see a whole wide range of things which don make sense to you, what do you look for?
Disclaimer: Do not proceed unless you have some idea what you are doing. This is a part of the computer which you can break. Always do you research first and do so at your own risk.
On the left hand side of your Taskbar you will see the applications running and on the right you will see the resources they are using such as memory, CPU and Hard drive.
Weird Names: The first thing to look out for is Gobbledygook names. Most processes will have names which are humanly understandable. But some might just be a crazy bunch of charters. Sometimes they are legitimate, but when i find one that doesn’t look right to me I search on Google and that usually gives me a good idea of if it is suppose to be running or not, and if it is something more sinister like a computer virus.
Over use of Resources: Virus and problematic applications and processes can sometimes be identified by their misuse or processes. If you look in the process column you will notice most processors only using a small percentage of the CPU for example.
If you look at the same column from most used to less, you might see one at the top using 150% of some number much higher than the rest.
Sometimes this can be a problem with a legitimate app, and other times it can be a virus. Again, a search in Google might give you a way to identify the problem and shut it down.
Shutting down the bad processors will probably not fix the problem,. As they will most likely start up soon enough again or as soon as you restart the computer.
However, this will give you a good idea of what is going on with your computer.
