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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
July 29,
2007
Q.
When I open my Task Manager, all I see is a
blank box. There is no menu or any way to
change what I am looking at. This only
happens on one of our computers. How can I
get it back to normal?
A. All
you have to do is place the cursor in the
top border as shown here, and double click
it there.
That was
a short one, so while I'm discussing the
Task Manager, here's another question
frequently asked about it.
Q.
I would like to see what is consuming my CPU's
time
and slowing down my computer. Is there an
easy way to do this?
A.
There is a very easy way to accomplish this.
Being able to observe the CPU's activities
while there is apparently nothing else open
or running is a very good way to see if
there is activity occurring without your
knowledge. Adware/spyware and viruses can
cause this, which will definitely slow down
your computer.
Follow
these steps to set things up.
1. Press
Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task manager. The
Ctrl+Alt+Del combination will also get you
to the same place in XP while it takes additional steps to do the same in Vista.
2. Click
on Options, and check “Always on top” if it
isn't already checked.
3. Click
the Performances tab and something similar
to this will display. This is in Vista with
a dual core processor. Yours may be slightly
different.
4. Double
click the blank space on the menu bar to the
right of the “Users” tab. The display will
change to this. Note there will be only
one window on the right for a single core
processor.
5. To see just the CPU usage, click and drag the
bottom right corner and close the box
down to something like this:
Now, you
can move this to the right side of the
screen where it will be out of the way. It
allows observing the CPU usage while you are
at rest or doing other activities. To return
the Task Manager to its normal display, just
double click the space above "CPU Usage".
If your
computer has nothing open or running, the
CPU usage should be at or near 0%. It may
fluctuate up and down a little, but should
be below 5%. If it is showing anything above
that, there is something running in the
background that you probably don't know
about and likely don't want running.
Note that
right after boot up, there may be normal
updates and other preliminary actions taking
place so wait several minutes until all has settled out
before getting too concerned about a high
CPU usage percent.
Since
most adware/spyware or virus programs cloak
or stealth themselves to prevent being displayed in the Task
Manager's Applications dialog window, the best way
to detect and remove them is to use a good,
up to date virus protection
program and Spyware
detector and remover program, with emphasis
on up to date.
Frequently, when I get a computer that is
having problems, I find that either there is
no anti-virus or anti-spyware programs
installed or even more often, they are NOT
up to date. New computers usually come with
an introductive copy of anti-virus or
anti-spyware programs installed that will
function for 90 days or so, but are NEVER
updated by the user.
Having a
protection program that is out of date is
worse than not having one at all since it may give
a false security that you are protected when
you are not. It a little like having a gun
in your house for protection, but never
buying any bullets for it.
There is
no excuse for not having good malware
protection since there are excellent FREE
programs available. A good
FREE antivirus program called AVast can be
downloaded
HERE,
and one called AVG , also free, can be downloaded
HERE.
A good FREE Anti-Spyware program called
"Spybot Search and Destroy" can be
downloaded
HERE,
and one called Ad-Aware, also free, can be downloaded
HERE.
These may
require some periodical user actions like
running manual scans, but they do work well
and offer good protection if combined with a
little common sense.
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