At first glance Task Manager looks like nothing more than a geeky way to tell you what you already know, the names of the programs running on your PC.
Explore out favourite Task Manager tricks, though, and you'll find all kinds of options for monitoring your system, detecting and resolving problems, especially in its most modern Windows Vista/Windows 7 incarnation. Here's what you need to know.
1. Browse your processes
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Task Manager. By default the first thing you'll see is the Applications tab, but this is misleadingly named and of little much use as it just lists top-level windows. If you want to see what's actually running on your PC then click the Processes tab, click "Show processes from all users", and scroll down the list. If you don't know what a process is then right-click it and select Properties to get more information, such as the folder where it's stored, which will usually offer additional clues.