The Task Manager in Windows 8 and any other version of Windows, is a tool that many users work with. There are many tabs, with plenty of information being displayed. However, the bulk of your time will be spent in the Processes tab. This tab shows all of the processes running on your system and also how much of your system resources each is using. It is very handy when troubleshooting system slowdowns or when killing misbehaving processes. Windows 8 has made this process simpler than ever. Read on and we’ll show the new Processes tab, how it works and what it can do for you.

The Devices and Printers panel was first introduced in Windows 7 with the aim of providing a friendly way to interact with external devices connected to your computer. However, in order for the concept to work as intended, hardware manufacturers need to provide support for this feature in their Windows drivers.
This article will explain what Devices and Printers panel is, where to find it, both in Windows 7 and Windows 8, and how to use it to interact with devices.

The first time you open the Task Manager in Windows 8, you might be in for a surprise. There isn’t much to see in its window. Don’t panic, this is a compact view of the awesome tool. This is not the whole tool. Though there isn’t much going on in this view, it is still very useful for switching between open apps and desktop applications or for killing programs without having to switch to them. This works especially when especially on computers and devices with touch. Read on and we’ll show how this simple interface can help you out.

Everybody knows that installing lots of drivers and software on a computer increases its vulnerability from a security standpoint. As you install stuff, the complexity increases as well as the likelihood of encountering security issues. I always wanted a tool to evaluate how the security of a system evolves while installing software that you plan to use and so far I haven’t found one. Luckily, Microsoft released a free evaluation tool named Attack Surface Analyzer. If you want to learn more about it and how to use it, read this article.

A while ago I started covering Windows services, what they are and what they do. At that time I tried to cover the basics every user should understand about a service. I think it’s time to get more in-depth and cover the more advanced aspects about Windows services.

We would like to finish our coverage of the Task Manager in Windows 7 with an article showing some advanced tricks about how it can be used. The article will include: how to manage active services, identify the processes used by a service, view data about your system’s resource usage or your network utilization and how to manage other active users on your computer.

Both Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer many tools you can use to administer different aspects of the operating system. One less known administrative tool is Computer Management. Over the years, I have come to love this tool and use it more than any other tools. In this article I would like to share the reasons why I use Computer Management so often and what you can do with it. Hopefully, by the end of this read, you will start to use it more often.

I’ve personally always thought of Task Manager as the manual override button for whenever a computer or one of its programs is acting strangely and I just want to close it or shut it down immediately. But, Task Manager is actually much more than that. It’s a Windows function that can provide detailed information about various processes, applications, and the general performance of your machine’s memory. So, while yes, it can be used to quickly shut down the computer or terminate any program; you might have noticed it also has several other tabs that do so many other cool things.

We are going to look at Performance Monitor, also known as PerfMon.exe: a complex tool used to do just what it sounds like it does - monitor the performance of your computer. Using it, you can see how your computer manages its resources. This can help you make choices about which programs work the best in unison for your computer. For example, if you like to listen to music while running an advanced program for work or a video game for play, which music client provides the least drag on your system? Also, the information it gives you, may help you make decisions about other software and hardware choices if your computer’s performance is below your expectations.

In our first tutorial about the Event Viewer I skipped over several items, promising to come back to them later. Now, let’s explore some of those items, to see what the Event Viewer can do for you, besides letting you look at what’s going on. There is definitely more here than meets the eye. In this tutorial we’ll explore how to create and save custom views, so you can keep an eye on any kind of logged information you are interested in.

I’m sure some of you are asking "What on earth is the Event Viewer, and why would I want to work with it?" Windows starts to keep track of what it is doing as soon as you start it up, and continuously saves log files that can provide a wealth of information when something goes wrong (and even when everything is fine). The Event Viewer gives you an easy way to look those logs. In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at the logs and the information Event Viewer gives you about what’s going on inside.

I would like to continue our series of more advanced articles on managing user accounts and groups, with a tutorial about how to use the Local Users and Groups panel (snap-in) from Computer Management to create user accounts and user groups.