Using Your PC's Resource-Monitoring Tools to Troubleshoot

PCs & Laptops For Dummies

All your PC's performance‐ and resource‐monitoring tools provide good feedback, but the details are trivial. Activity always abounds inside a computer. The concern is whether that activity is causing the system to slow down.

Whenever the PC starts acting slowly, pop up the Task Manager and click the Processes tab. Click the CPU column header to sort the list of running programs by processor use. (If necessary, click the header twice so that the programs using the CPU the most appear at the top of the list.) The program using the most CPU time is probably the one slowing your PC.

You can also click the Task Manager's Performance tab to check on memory and other resources. But to confirm that the single program is consuming too many resources, use the Resource Manager: In the Resource Manager window, choose the suspect program from the list on the Overview tab. Then select all resources.

What you're looking for is increased consumption of resources over time. In some cases, the program may busy itself for a short span, and then regular activity resumes. When a program continues to consume resources, you might consider terminating it to see whether the PC's performance improves.

If a single program is to blame, consider getting an update for the program.
If the program is a background task that gobbles too many resources, consider rescheduling the task for a time when you're not using the computer.
A program that continues to use resources after it quits, especially memory, has a memory leak. You should stop using that program and see whether an update or replacement is available.
Some web page plugins may cause problems. These plugins might appear as issues with the web browser program itself, but they're not. The way to fix this issue is to check the web browser's settings or preferences and disable the plugin.
Malware also consumes resources at a rabid pace. You can attempt to halt the run‐amok program, but it's best to run a scan and have Windows Defender remove it.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.