Common information

Windows Task Manager is a standard utility of the OS’s Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. It allows you monitoring in real-time running applications and started processes, evaluate CPU and network usage.

In order to open the Task Manager on the keyboard press simultaneously the buttons CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+SHIFT+ESC.

The open window displays four tabs which correspond to four activities monitored by the Task Manager: Applications, Processes, Performance (usage of system recourses) and Networking. Processes is the default opening tab.

If no applications are running on the computer the Task Manager displays only servicing processes of the OS installed on the PC.

When working with a computer at home it is recommended immediately after the OS installation to see the list of processes running on the PC. In future if you suspect your computer being infected you can view the list of running processes and exclude those processes which were from the beginning.

Description of most processes can be found in the Internet. That is why whenever you have suspicions concerning a process; search the global network for the process definition.

Each process has the following parameters displayed: Image Name (as a rule it coincides with the name of the executable file), User Name (name of the user who started the process), Central Processor Unit Usage (the CPU column) and the memory usage (the MemUsage column).

If necessary you can end a process by clicking the button End Process.

Example, you have detected a suspicious process and on the site of virus encyclopedia www.viruslist.com you have read that the process unambiguously belongs to a virus or a Trojan program, but either no anti-virus program is installed on your PC or the installed anti-virus program does not detect it. In this case you should close all running applications and using the Task Manager to manually end this process. In order to prevent the process from re-running it is strongly recommended to install an anti-virus program (if no is installed), update the anti-virus databases and start scanning the hard drive for viruses. If an anti-virus program does not find a virus in an executable file of a suspicious process, then e-mail this file to newvirus@kaspersky.com.