How do I tell whats running in background

  • Thread starter Thread starter The Old Timer
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The Old Timer

How do I tell exactly what's running if it doesn't appear when you use
CTRL,ALT,DEL & go to applications? I'm often certain that something is
running & when I look in this location I don't see anything that I wasn't
aware of already. Then I might get a popup to say that I might have had a
full system antivirus scan even though this didn't appear on the displayed
list. I have even left processes displayed on the screen with CPU usage
sorted so item with larger number is displayed first & the only large figure
seen is system idle, even though I can hear the PC's drives churning away.
My antivirus software is always up to date & running.
 
The Old Timer said:
How do I tell exactly what's running if it doesn't appear when you use
CTRL,ALT,DEL & go to applications? I'm often certain that something is
running & when I look in this location I don't see anything that I wasn't
aware of already. Then I might get a popup to say that I might have had a
full system antivirus scan even though this didn't appear on the displayed
list. I have even left processes displayed on the screen with CPU usage
sorted so item with larger number is displayed first & the only large
figure
seen is system idle, even though I can hear the PC's drives churning away.
My antivirus software is always up to date & running.
Click to expand...


Look in the Process task of the Task Manager (CTRL,ALT,DEL).
 
Task Manager allows you to view Applications and Processes [via separate tabs].

Applications will include MS WOrd, Processes will include Internet Explorer
[iexplore.exe]and Taskmanager [taskmgr.exe]. Your Anti Virus 'application'
will show up as a process [Norton as nav...exe, AVG as avg..exe and so on.. ]
plus they will have a liveupdate element and other tasks associated with
them. System Idle will always represent the balance [unused] portion of CPU
capacity: so if other processes etc use 70% system idle is 30%, and vice
versa.

You hard drive 'churning' means that the system is paging data in and out of
memory onto and off the hard drive. I suspect that you have <256Mb of memory.

To reduce the 'swapping' of data get more RAM.

Make sure that you disable any file sharing if you use KaZaa or Limewire or
any other file stealing [whoops sharing] applications. This will prevent
others from 'downloading files' off your PC, which may also cause the HDD to
churn away, even if you think nothing is going on.

To be certain that your system is free of Crud, make sure that you have an
anti spyware application such as Spybot Search and Destroy.
 
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