by Gino K

Created on: June 19, 2008

It's very important for us to know what processes are running on our computer. This is very important because most of the virus have the tendency to slow down a computer. This can be checked for atleast some virus. This is due to the fact that not all virus can be so easy to find. But many virus or malware tend to cause the slowing down of our system. I personally don't understand why somebody would want another persons computer slow down. No, actually what I think about this is that these people do it because they are in some way satisfied of doing something that was not supposed to be done. They find it enthusiastic to enter or change something in somebody's computer,obviously without authorization.

That's what Hackers are but anyway let's stick to the topic. So, as I was explaining how checking what's running on our computer is a really useful in eliminating any kind of anomalous activity. Anomalous activity here is the processes carried out by Trojan Horses, Spyware, Adware, Malware, Worms, Bugs and so on. Well, to somebody who's new to all of this, they may look like they are all the same thing but aren't.

For example, Spyware is a program that sends sensitive information about the victim without him or her knowing this is actually happening to another user with malicious intentions. But on the other hand if we take a look at Adware, it is a program which also can be designed to send sensitive information but it will also display unauthorized ads on the system it is present in (it can even automatically take the user to a particular web site without the user wanting to do it).

But the most important thing we must understand here is that we can check if any of these programs are running on our computer. In a computer running with a windows XP operating system it is a very simple thing to do. All you need to do is open taskmanager. This can be done by using ctrl+alt+delete keyboard shortcut. Then a window opens up with many tabs. The tabs present are applications, processes, performance, network, users. From these tabs you have to select the processes tab which will in turn show us all of the processes that are running on that particular computer. This is for doing it on a computer running with a Microsoft Windows XP operating system.

For doing this on a Macintosh computer running a Mas OS, it is done in a different way. It can be done by using a utility called Activity Monitor. This utility is in Macintosh HD>Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor. It is a very easy tool to us,so I don't think there will be any complications. As for me, I do this very frequently,even if I notice my system has slowed down a bit. I propose all of you to do the same.

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