Task Manager to the Rescue

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I just “discovered” a function in the Windows Task Manager (XP Home, not sure about prior versions) that got me out of a spot. When you bring up the Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del), there’s “New task

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Win 2000 has the same New Task button.

I believe that when icons, etc., start disappearing, it is better to do a reboot to clean things up.

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I agree about the reboot. This way just gave me a chance to do a bit more housekeeping before the reboot, than would otherwise have been possible.

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Thanks Tim–a lot.

This just got me out of a “hung app” freeze that happens occasionally–possibly because XP wants an additional 256MB Ram to handle my excess when I do searches and keep a good number of browser windows open, and it will sustain an awful lot of Windows plus WMP which takes CPU then throw in a site with some spyware on it that takes CPU and add some spyware I might have picked up in between runniing Adaware and Spybot despite having Spyguard up and looking).

I had been hitting that button, then wondering what constructive I could put in there–and may have even put a process but not explorer.exe which did the trick.[/i] And before I did this, my browser windows would all close down 90% of the time with a “whatever not responding” on the namebar, and I might get a box “(Program Not Responding)” popping up. I could usually get an individual one to open up by hitting the “switch to” button, and work with it, but that still wouldn’t stop the overall pending crash–your tip stopped it cold.

Very helpful and this just makes me think there are more nuggets to mine from Taskmanager’s assets. I will throw processes up and often notice that there are two instances of explorer.exe running and am not sure how to interpret that, what caused it, and have believed it’s not a positive sign. Do you know the source of two or more explorer.exe’s listed in “Processes” in TM and what would you do with them if anything?

SMBP

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Glad to help. I almost didn’t post this one because it seemed too obvious (once I knew about it), Half expected some “Yeah, everyone knows that” feedback.

I find erratic system behaviour starts to creep in after extended surfing, and/or use of graphics apps. When surfing, the initial symptoms are the disappearance of the status bar at the bottom of the window and uncooperative “Open in New Window” and url links. I now try to be on the lookout for such clues and do a quick “log off / log on” cycle to get things under control again. If things get to the “not responding” stage I take it as a strong hint that a reboot is due. I use a folder on my desktop for (temporarily) dragging shortcuts to so I can at least roughly pick up my browsing and other stuff from where I was.

When you see two eplorer.exe’s, one is running your desktop, taskbar, etc, the other is you “exploring” folders and files. If you close them via Task Manager one will close all open folder windows, the other will make your desktop vanish. Don’t know the tech details behind it, but that’s the guts of it from observation.

You also see multiple explorer.exe’s is with Fast User Switching. If you’re logged in as an administrator and have ticked “Show processes from all users”, then other logged on users’ processes are shown, as well as yours and the system. You can see who each process belongs to if the “User Name” column is displayed (View | Select Columns

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Thanks for the tips. I need to be more aware of signs for reboot, and hadn’t been watching for the status bar as a trigger. I want to investigate the cause of the desktop disappearance I also got when I thought I could help by ending one of the explorer.exe’s because it was one of the chief CPU guzzlers. One mini-tip with Task Manager is that it will sometimes show all programs as “running” even when one or more is “not responding”–and you can make it cough up the truth by hitting “refresh now” on the “view” menu, and hitting the “End Task” button.

The shortcuts folder is a good idea–instead of “sending shortcut to desktop” I avoid that step by dragging them into the folder from the small icon at the left of the window’s title bar–sometimes I make a catchall and sort later.

SMBP

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Tim, You can also use this method to delete ‘in-use’ files (e.g. index.dat files). Just start a command window, then use task manager to kill explorer.exe. You can then navigate to the file location with good ole DOS commands. Do as you wish – delete, copy, move, etc.. Then restart explorer.exe.

Joe

--Joe

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