Windows Task Manager is one Windows feature which hasn’t seen a lot of improvement and additions in a long time. Even though Windows 7 Task Manager does provide the facility to filter processes by user and system, manage currently active and passive services, logged in users, network utilization, many users find themselves in the labyrinth of running system and users threads when a specific process of an application is to be dealt with. Despite being a complete rewrite of Windows 7 Task Manager, Windows 8Task Manager classifies the Windows tasks related information into separate groups, which help users easily navigate through user and system initiated processes. For example, one the feature of Windows 8 Taskbar is the auto-classification of processes into Applications, Background processes, and Windows processes categories; these categories reduce significant amount of time that users would have spend finding threads of certain applications.
The most notable aspect of Windows 8 Task Manager is its compactness. When you launch task manager from Windows taskbar, it shows only those applications which are currently running. You can right-click the active application to end all related processes, create dump file, view properties, open its location in Windows Explorer, and initiate web search to get detailed information about the application.
Clicking the More details toggle button will reveal the extended Windows 8 Task manager. The extended view includes Processes, Performance, App History, Startup, Users, Details, and Services tabs. The Processes tab groups threads by aforementioned categories. You can access options for application related processes via right-click context menu from Applications group. It includes an extra option, namely Details which takes you to Details tab to check all related threads.
Unlike Windows 7, where Processes tab shows only CPU and Memory usage, Windows 8 Task Manager includes two complementary columns namely Disk and Network, which will greatly help users to keep tab on current disk and network usage for all running applications and processes.
The Performance tab has been revitalized with dynamic, Line Graph, showing more detailed information regarding CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network usage. Underneath the graph window, it shows extra information about selected system element (CPU, Memory, Disk, or Network). For instance, when Memory is selected, it will display total memory in use, available, committed, cached, paged pool, and non-paged pool.
App History tab is a great new addition to Windows Task Manager. It maintains a list of application you launch during a session, so you can easily switch to any previously used application, and view its CPU and Network usage. The Reset Usage data will clear the usage statistics, letting you record application usage history from scratch.
Under Startup and Users tab, you can manage applications and processes which start up as soon as you log onto Windows, and view, disconnect and log off currently logged in users, respectively. The Details tab of Windows 8 Task Manager looks quite similar to Processes tab of Windows 7. Here, you will find collection of all user and system initiated processes with information like User name, CPU usage, Memory working set, and process description in respective fields.
From right-click context menu, you will be able to end process and process tree, debug application using Visual Studio or any other application debugger, create dump file, set CPU priority level and CPU affinity of selected application, analyze wait chain (using Wait Chain Tree, responsible to show which processes are using or waiting to use an already busy resource), search process details online, switch to respective service in Services tab, and view selected process properties.
Windows 8 Task Manager has certainly been augmented with useful features and options to better analyze current system health and performance. Features like App History and Wait Chain (Windows 7 Resource Monitor option) will help advance users quickly identify and resolve livelocks and deadlocks, which may cause a serious system catastrophe.
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