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In order for modern, multi-tasking, PC operating systems to run in a stable manner. Every program that runs does so within it's own process, allocated to it by the operating system. A process is basically an allocation of virtual system memory.

It is possible to view the currently running process on your system in a number of ways. If your operating system is Windows you can use 'Task Manager' which can be conjured up by right clicking your task-bar and selecting it from the context menu that appears, or you can use the CTRL + ALT + DEL key combination. If it isn't displayed by default select the 'Processes' tab once Task Manager has displayed. On Linux you can type the 'top' command (without quote marks) into your favorite shell. KDE and Gnome desktops both sport their own Task Manager equivalents. I shall be concentrating on Windows for the rest of this particular article but the same principals discussed will apply equally to both operating systems.

There are a number of columns of information displayed in the processes tab of Task Manager. The first column displays the name of the executable that is running. Some of these will be immediately obvious such as firefox.exe or IEXPLORER.exe. Others will be a little more obscure such as lsass.exe for example which is Windows Local Security Authority Service. This process is used to authorise your login and enforce the local security policy such as access to files in the file-system. The other default columns displayed in Windows Task Manager are the user name under which the process is running, the percentage of CPU time the process is receiving and finally the amount of virtual memory the process is currently inhabiting in kilobytes. There are other interesting columns available from the view menu too, by clicking on the 'Select columns...' item The I/O reads column is a good one if you've ever wondered what exactly is causing your hard-drive light to suddenly come on when you aren't doing anything directly yourself.

You can order the process list by any column, by clicking on it's column heading with the mouse. When your computer seams to be running slower than usual or exhibiting unexpected behavior, the processes in Task Manager will be a good place to start your investigation. Order the list by memory usage and then CPU, to see if any process is hogging memory or the CPU. Many programs suffer from memory leaks particularly if run uninterrupted for long periods of time. This is where a program uses some memory

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