In Part I of this series, we looked at the Processes, Information, and Services tabs of Task Manager in Windows 10, and in Part II we looked at the Performance and Application History tabs. In this last part, we’ll talk about the Startup and Users tabs.
Start up
One of the most important tabs in Windows 10’s Task Manager is the Startup tab. On older versions of Windows, the launch tab was located in the MSCONFIG dialog, but has since been moved. In Windows 10, you get additional information about startup items that we never had.
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At the top and right, you will see the last BIOS time, which will tell you exactly how long your system was in the BIOS phase before Windows booted. Basically, this is the time it takes your system to initialize all hardware. I have 15 seconds, which is quite long, but that’s okay as I have my own computer with multiple hard drives, network cards, USB ports, etc. On a base system, this value should be less than 10 seconds. You can read more about Last BIOS time here
Below you will find a list of all startup items on your Windows 10 system. By default, they are sorted alphabetically. I personally like to sort it by the Launch Impact column as it is more useful. Windows scored from low to high based on several different factors.
As you can see from my system above, Adobe Creative Cloud has a big impact as it loads 25 different processes on startup. You can click the arrow to expand the list if you want to see all the processes included in this program.
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To disable a startup item, simply right-click it and select Disable.
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Note that you can only disable or enable the entire startup item as a whole. You cannot extend it and only disable certain processes or executable files. If you don’t know exactly what to launch, select Search the Internet and you will definitely get some information on the Internet.
The Startup tab is one of the places you need to go if you ever need to clean boot Windows. A clean boot is a Windows troubleshooting technique that helps you pinpoint a problem in a specific program or process running on your system.
Users tab
Finally, the Users tab in Windows basically tells you what processes are running for each user on the system.
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This is only really useful if you have multiple users on your Windows PC. Otherwise, it just lists your account and shows the same information as in the Performance tab. However, if you have multiple users who are logged in and the other user has not closed the program, you can quickly see if that program is using resources on the PC.
If you are an administrator, you can also complete another user’s task, thereby freeing up those resources. Obviously this could result in data loss for another user, so be careful when deleting a process from another user.
That’s all there is to Task Manager in Windows 10. It has been around for decades, and rightfully so. It provides a lot of useful information about your PC and system in real time and can be very helpful in troubleshooting. Enjoy!
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