Part 3: Customizing Windows in C#.NET

Encode Denso QR Bar Code in C#.NET Part 3: Customizing Windows

Tuning Up System Performance of the CPU each process is using. (We discuss these essential capabilities later in this chapter, in Managing Programs and Processes, page 340.) You can keep tabs on your network connection to determine whether your network adapter is a bottleneck. And if you re willing to customize the Task Manager, you can dig into a wealth of esoteric performance indicators as well, some of which can be extremely useful in helping you find and fix performance problems. Tip Match programs with processes Process is the technical term for any program code that runs in its own address space. In Windows Task Manager, the Processes list includes applications that you start from the All Programs menu, as well as subsystems and services that are managed by the operating system. To match a running program with the specific process it s using, right-click the program name on the Applications tab of Windows Task Manager and then choose Go To Process. If you re using the Welcome screen to log on to Windows, you can open the Windows Task Manager at any time by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete. If you re not using the Welcome screen or if you re joined to a Windows domain, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and then click the Task Manager button in the Windows Security dialog box. And regardless of your system configuration, you can always go directly to Task Manager by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc. As Figure 10-1 shows, Windows Task Manager is a multitabbed dialog box. The Applications, Processes, and Performance tabs are visible on all Windows XP systems. The Networking tab is visible only if the computer is configured with a network adapter, and the Users tab is shown only if Fast User Switching is enabled. A status bar at the bottom of the window, visible on all tabs, displays the number of processes that are currently running, the percentage of your CPU s processing capacity that s currently in use, and some information about your system s current memory usage.

Figure 10-1. Each entry on the Processes tab of Windows Task Manager provides useful details about memory and CPU usage for that process.

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Windows Task Manager is missing its menus. If Windows Task Manager mysteriously appears without its title bar, menu bar, tabs, and status bar, don t be alarmed. You inadvertently double-clicked in the Task Manager window and switched to this stripped-down interface. It s not a bug; it s a feature, designed to give you a clearer, less cluttered picture of system information. To toggle between this resizable window and the normal view, double-click anywhere except within the list box that displays the names of programs and processes.

The Performance tab, shown in Figure 10-2, provides four graphs and some tabular data. The CPU Usage and PF Usage graphs display the percentage of your CPU s processing capacity and the amount of virtual memory (page file) capacity that your system has reserved for future use as of the most recent update of Windows Task Manager. The CPU Usage History and Page File Usage History line graphs show the same performance measures over time. (For more details about page file usage, see Making the Most of Virtual Memory, page 337.)

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How much history the two history graphs record depends on Windows Task Manager s current update speed and the width of its window. Each vertical gridline in these graphs represents six update intervals. If you widen the window, you see more history. By default, Windows Task Manager updates its data once every two seconds. To increase the frequency to twice per second, in Task Manager, click View, choose Update Speed, and then change the frequency from Normal to High. To reduce the update frequency to once every four seconds, choose the Low setting from the Update Speed menu. If you want to study the graph of the most recent history, you can stop all updates by clicking View and choosing Update Speed,