A computer gets particularly frustrating when it seems to stop responding. There are several reasons for this to happen, but it boils down to a single root cause: it's busy doing something else.

Next time you find yourself waiting for a window to open, try calling up the Task Manager to see what's happening. Do this by simultaneously holding down the Ctrl, Alt and Delete keys. A window will open up with six buttons along the bottom. The lower center button is labeled Task Manager.

The Task Manager has four tabs. From left to right these are: Applications, Processes, Performance and Networking. The first three of these will help you understand why your computer has become so frustrating.

Applications lists, under the heading of Tasks, the programs you currently have running. Things like Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word will be listed here. To the right of the Task column is Status. If this says Not responding then the program is hanging and you'll need to shut it down manually. Do this by highlighting the particular Task, then clicking End Task at the bottom of the window. It's important to note though that these Tasks are not the only programs active on your computer, it's just that these are running in the foreground rather than in the background.

If you want to see everything that's running, click on the next tab, Processes. You'll see four column headings, Image Name, User Name, CPU and Mem Usage. Of these, the first and last are perhaps the most interesting. Under Image Name you'll see every program, or Process that's running in the background. There could be forty to sixty of these processes, and from time to time they each want a share of the processor's capacity. That's one reason why you might be drumming your fingers on the desk as you wait for a spreadsheet to load: the files needed to run Excel are waiting in line behind say, svchost.exe.

Over on the right is a column labeled Mem Usage. This shows how much memory each process is needed. Now remember that this is Random Access Memory, or RAM, rather than hard drive space. Do you know how much RAM you have? Well if it's less than the total of all memory used by the processes that are running, that's another reason why your computer is frustrating. Without enough RAM to run all the processes it has to keep moving data on and off the hard drive, which is much slower.

Now let's look under the Performance tab. On the left there are two columns, the upper one labeled CPU Usage and the lower one PF Usage. To the right of these are two scrolling line graphs. These just show the time history for CPU Usage and PF Usage. The CPU Usage graphs show how hard your processor is working. If it's up at 100% that means it's going as fast as it can, which can be another reason for your frustration.

The PF Usage graphs indicate how much of the available memory is being used. However, the numbers themselves don't mean too much because Windows has some pretty complex rules about how to allocate memory. What you can deduce though is that if you're using almost all of your PF capacity the computer will run slowly, and yes, once again, you will be experiencing some frustration.

Now finally, when you've finished your peek under the hood of your computer, close the Task Manager by click on the X in the upper right corner.

This should have given you an insight into what your computer is doing when it appears to go to sleep. The simple fact is that it's probably working as hard as it can, but it's doing things that you're not aware of. Next time you find yourself getting frustrated with your computer, call up the Task Manager and take a look at what it's up to.

Learn more about this author, Nigel Holmes.
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