Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
You might be running many different programs on your computer and not even know it. Finding out what's running is easy using tools in Windows.
How can I tell what's running on my machine?
•
To many this might seem like an odd question. I mean it's pretty easy to see if your mail program or word processor is running, right? Well, yes. But there's so much more you don't see. Today's operating systems are quite complex and doing nothing your machine might have a dozen different processes running.
•
In the Windows 9x world (Windows 95, 98 and Me), CTRL+ALT+DEL brings up a dialog box that lists almost all of the processes running. I say almost because portions of the operating system itself might not be represented. That's by design since in Win 9x that dialog isn't really there to give you information but rather to allow you to terminate unresponsive programs.
In Windows XP (and its predecessors Windows 2000 and Windows NT) the system includes a built in "Task Manager". There are many ways to run it, but my favorite shortcut is to right click on the clock in the task bar and select "Task Manager". It too will show you a list of applications running which may be very short much like under Windows 98. However under the Processes tab you'll find a list of all processes running on your machine - there will be many more, especially if you select the Show processes from all users checkbox. (Hint: you can click on the columns in Task Manager to sort the output by that column which is particularly handy when you want to see who's using the most memory or CPU time.)
Given the difference in size between the list of applications running and the list of processes running it begs questions like "Why?" And "What's that difference between the two?".
A simple answer is this: a process is a single running program and an an application consists of one or more processes. If you've got Microsoft Word running you'll see "Microsoft Word" in the application list and winword.exe in the process list. All those other processes? In a sense they're running as part of the operating system "application".
But what are they? Well that's going to vary a lot from machine to machine based on two things: the software installed and the hardware installed. Certainly obvious items might include your instant messaging client, or other programs you use and know about. However when you install some software packages they may cause additional processes to run on your machine even when you're not running the application. Examples include Real Player or QuickTime's update services, a fax program's receive monitor, or a virus scanner's real-time virus scanning process. The same applies for hardware, many hardware drivers include additional processes that run all the time.
There's no one answer for determining exactly what each process running on your machine is, however I do cover many of the steps you can take to figure it out in this previous article: What's this program running on my machine?.
Article C1872 - December 25, 2003 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
April 30, 2009 1:30 AM
hi sir my pc is too slow i am using a 256mb ram p4 prosseer deleted %temp% files defrag the disk and insceese the virtual memory but this is no responce
September 27, 2009 2:41 AM
Very good quick reference, thank you.
October 27, 2010 9:10 AM
Hi - for the past week, something starts running after midnight and it causes the blue "screen of death" - is there a way of trying to find out what is starting up at that time?
10-Nov-2010
January 5, 2011 5:45 PM
After I had a HD crash and replaced it I re-installed the OS. I'm a gammer and I play BF2142 "a lot", or did so to say. Now when I play after a few min's the screen jumps around and the whole thing stagers worce then a drunk.
I've ran just about every spyware and virious program, reg repair and any other thing I can think of and nothing showes up. If I stop or pause the game everything seems to return to normal. I'm now useing Norton Internet anti-virious and have tried everything I can think of to locate whats going on but as soon as I enter the game Norton seems to stop logging the processes. As soon as I pause the game everything returns to normal. Issue is that it runs great for about 8 min's and then goes to it's knees for about 4 min's then it repeats itself. At other times I get a message that says program not responding and then I'm asked if I want to close it or wait. sooner or later it respondes. On the internet some IP's seem to take forever to load or I get a "No link" message. Any Ideas? I'm running Quad AMD 64's at 2.8 ghz, Vista 64-sp2 fully updated. I have 8 gig of mem and plenty of video etc. This thing ran really fast before no matter what.
January 17, 2012 3:36 PM
Hi there! I agree with another commenter. I can find out what's running, but the file does not give you enough information to determine WHAT IT IS, and exactly what it's doing. I ask because my grand-daughter has just discovered the Internet, and since she has been using my computer it has, all of a sudden, slowed down. My computer is a Dell, only 13 months old, and I keep it cleaned, inside and out. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance
•
Comments on this entry are closed.
If you have a question, start by using the search box up at the top of the page - there's a very good chance that your question has already been answered on Ask Leo!.
If you don't find your answer, head out to http://askleo.com/ask to ask your question.