Windows 10 Task Manager

The Task Manager in Windows 10 has been completely overhauled. It’s easier-to-use, slicker, and more feature-packed than ever. The Task Manager now manages startup programs, shows your IP address, and displays slick resource usage graphs. The new color-coding highlights the processes using the most system resources, so you can see them at a glance.

Launching the Task Manager

First, you’re going to want to open the Task Manager. There’re a few ways you can do this.

• Probably the most widely-used method is by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL on your keyboard simultaneously. It opens the Windows Security Screen, which offers quick access to various functions, including the Task Manager.
• You can also use the key combination CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to open the Task Manager directly.
• You can simply type "Task Manager" into the Start Menu or Cortana search box.
• You can also access it by right-clicking the Start button and selecting it from the quick menu there.
• If you want to be really fancy, you can just ask Cortana, "Hey Cortana, open Task Manager".

Once you’re in, you’ll be presented with either the compact Task Manager or full Task Manager, as seen below. If you’re in compact view, simply hit "More Details" at the bottom to access the full Task Manager. It should open to the Processes tab by default.

How to Run Task Manager As Admin in Windows 10

Here is another way to Run Windows Task Manager As Admin, in case the first method does not suit you or just to know yet another way of doing this.

Type in taskmgr in the Windows 10 Start search box. This will bring up the Task Manager desktop app

Right-click on the Task Manger Desktop app icon, and select Run as administrator from the pop up dialogue box.

On the next screen you will be asked to enter the password for the admin account.

Another Way to Run Windows Task Manager As Admin

Well there is an easier way to do this (in fact two ways), just follow the steps below to Run Windows Task Manager As Admin from any other account without admin rights.

Hit Windows + R Keys to bring up the Run command dialogue box. Another way of doing this is to right click on Windows 10 Start button and click on Run:

Type runas /user:Admin taskmgr in the command box and click OK.

Note: In this example ‘Admin’ is the name of the user with administrative privileges. In your case, the admin name might be something else. Most likely it might be your own first or last name, as it is quite common to create user accounts with admin privileges using names. In order to use this command you do need to know the name of the user that has admin rights and you also need to know the admin password.

Once you click OK, you will see a popup window asking you to enter the password for the admin account.

Managing Processes

The Task Manager’s default interface lets you easily view and end active applications, without any clutter getting in the way. It shows both Metro-style apps and desktop apps.

Click the “More details” button and you’ll see much more information. Resource-usage statistics are color-coded – the darker the color, the more resources used.

You can expand an app to see its windows, if the app has multiple windows.

The list of processes is divided into three sections – apps, background processes and Windows system processes.

If you’re not sure what a processes is, you can right-click it and select “Search online” to search for it in your default search engine.

Performance Tab

In the Performance tab, you can also double click/tap on the left or right side to switch to summary view. To return to normal view, just double click/tap anywhere in the small footprint mode window. On the left-hand side of the performance view live mini-graph views are shown for each performance metric, and on the right-hand side you see a detail graph for the selected metric.

Each performance category has a unique information view at the bottom that shows relevant statistics for the performance category currently selected. One of the great enhancements in these graph views is how the bounds of the graphs are dynamically scaled to current utilization.

You can copy information to the clipboard easily by right-clicking and hitting "copy" on each graph. It can come in handy if you’re trying to diagnose a PC problem with your device’s technical support team and need to send them an email. If you want to monitor your PC hardware continuously, right-clicking on the left side bar allows you to condense the Performance tab into a "Summary view".

App history Tab

The App History tab shows historical resource utilization metrics for apps. By default, the view shows only Windows Store App resource utilization. While on the app history tab, you can go to Options (menu bar) and click/tap on Show history for all processes to see historical resource utilization for all apps.

Users Tab

The Users tab breaks down your system’s resource usage by user account. You can expand a user’s name to view that user’s processes.

Advanced Process Details & Services

The Details tab is the evolution of the old Processes tab on previous versions of Windows. It doesn’t have a pretty interface – although application icons have been added. It exposes exposes advanced options not found on other tabs, including process priority and CPU affinity. (CPU affinity determines which CPU a process runs on, if your system has multiple CPUs or a CPU with multiple cores.)

The Services tab has been prettied up and now includes an option to quickly restart services.

You can click the Open Services link to use the Services application, which contains the advanced options you won’t find in the Task Manager.

Task Manager is your friend

When programs freeze up or go rogue, Task Manager is on hand like a personal computer sidekick. The new Task Manager is a huge step up, both in features and presentation. It’s particularly exciting that average users finally have a way to manage their automatically starting programs.