As I mentioned earlier in my article comparing Windows 7 and Windows 10, the Task Manager has been completely redesigned. It’s a lot easier to use by default, but if you really want all the details like you did before, you can still get them!
There are a couple more small shortcuts and options that I discovered while playing around with the Task Manager in Windows 10.
In this post, I will cover just a few simple tricks and tips I learned and hopefully you enjoy the new Task Manager if you have a Windows 10 PC. Read my other posts about Windows 10 Task Manager if you want more details. familiarize yourself with them.
Open the task manager in Windows 10
There are several ways to get to the Task Manager in Windows 10 that are worth mentioning here.
1. You can press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC if you like keyboard shortcuts.
2. You can right-click the Start button or taskbar and select Task Manager.
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3. Press Windows Key + R and type taskmgr.exe.
4. Press CTRL + ALT + DELETE and select Task Manager.
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There are many ways to access the Task Manager! Depending on how you use your computer, I’m sure one of these four will work for you.
Add additional columns
From time to time I need to see additional information about a Windows process such as PID (Process ID). In Windows 10, you can simply right-click on any header and add additional columns by checking them off.
See logical processors
Many consumer computers nowadays have multiple CPU cores / threads. If you have certain applications that can use multiple cores and want to make sure that the process load is indeed being balanced, you can go to the Performance tab, click on CPU, then right click and select Change Graph to , and then select Logical Processors.
By default, Task Manager only shows total CPU usage. Now you can see the utilization of every logical processor in the system! Sweet.
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Startup effect
The Windows 10 Task Manager has a great feature that allows you to see the “impact” the startup process has on the system. This is very helpful in quickly identifying which programs are slowing down the boot process on startup.
Update speed
By default, the data you see in the performance tab only shows the last 60 seconds. If you want to change this, you can click View, Refresh Rate and select High, Normal, or Low.
A high level will control for 30 seconds and a low level for 4 minutes. Low also reduces the monitoring load on the machine. A 4 minute time frame is useful if you need to see performance for any time frame over 60 seconds.
Network stats
If you go to Ethernet under Performance, you can right-click the graph and select View Network Information.
Here you can see detailed information about your network connection, including connection speed, network usage, bytes sent, bytes received, and more.
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System runtime
Fortunately, you no longer need to download the program to see the system uptime in Windows. Just go to the “Performance” tab, click on “CPU” and at the bottom you will see that the runtime is getting shorter:
Brief presentation
Another nice feature in Task Manager is the summary. Just right-click any performance metric in the Performance tab and select Browse.
You now have a nice, compact dialog box that you can move anywhere on your desktop or on another screen if you have two monitors, and monitor the performance of other applications and programs.
That’s all! Windows 10 is definitely a nice upgrade over previous versions of Task Manager, and hopefully it gives you a little more information on how you can use it more effectively. Enjoy!
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