How to Use Task Manager in Windows 11 and Windows 10 (2026 Guide)

A program’s title bar says “(Not Responding)” and it won’t close, or your PC suddenly crawls for no obvious reason. Task Manager shows you which process is responsible and lets you shut it down in a couple of clicks.

Open Task Manager

Fix #1: Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc

This is the fastest way in, and it works even when the Start menu is frozen.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc at the same time.
2. Task Manager opens straight to the Processes page.

If that shortcut doesn’t respond, use one of these instead:

1. Right-click the Start button (or press Windows + X) and select Task Manager.

2. Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete and select Task Manager on the security screen.

3. Open Start, type Task Manager, and press Enter.
4. Press Windows + R, type taskmgr, and press Enter. The same taskmgr command works in Windows Terminal, Command Prompt, or PowerShell.

On Windows 11 you’ll see a menu down the left side. On Windows 10 the same sections appear as tabs across the top, and Startup apps is simply called Startup. Labels and available columns can vary by Windows edition, update level, administrator policy, and hardware.

Switch from the compact view to the full view

On some installations, Task Manager opens as a small window that lists only the running apps.

1. Select More details in the bottom-left corner.
2. The full Task Manager opens, with every page available.

Task Manager remembers this choice, so you only have to do it once.

Close a frozen or unresponsive app

Work through these in order. Each one is a bigger hammer than the last.

Fix #2: End the task from the Processes page

1. Open Task Manager with Ctrl + Shift + Esc.
2. Select Processes.
3. Find the frozen program under Apps. It usually shows Not responding in the Status column.
4. Select it, then select End task. You can also right-click it and choose End task.

The app should disappear from the list within a few seconds. Anything you hadn’t saved in that program is gone, so give it 10 to 20 seconds first if it’s in the middle of saving or downloading.

If the app appears as a group with an arrow beside it, expand the group. Modern apps like browsers run a separate process for each tab, extension, and renderer, so dozens of copies of the same name is normal and doesn’t point to malware.

Right-clicking any process gives you more options:

• Create memory dump file is for developers debugging a crash. You can ignore it.
• Go to details jumps to the same process on the Details page.
• Open file location shows where the program’s .exe lives on your drive.
• Search online runs a web search for the file name and description. It’s the quickest way to identify a process you don’t recognize.

Fix #3: End the process from the Details page

Sometimes End task on the Processes page doesn’t take. The Details page goes after the actual executable.

1. In Task Manager, right-click the stuck app on Processes and select Go to details.
2. The Details page opens with the matching .exe highlighted. Note the number in the PID (process ID) column.

3. Right-click the highlighted process and select End task. Depending on your build, this command may be labeled End process.
4. Confirm the prompt.

If the End task button is missing or grayed out, check that a process is actually selected and that the group is expanded. Some protected system processes can’t be ended at all, and processes owned by another user usually need administrator rights. Reopen Task Manager as an administrator and try again.

Fix #4: Restart Windows Explorer

If the taskbar, Start menu, or desktop icons have stopped responding, the problem is usually Windows Explorer rather than an app.

1. Open Task Manager and select Processes.
2. Find Windows Explorer in the list.
3. Right-click it and select Restart.

Your taskbar and desktop will vanish for a second or two and then come back. Open File Explorer windows will close.

Fix #5: Force-kill the process with taskkill

Use this when nothing in Task Manager will close the program.

1. Right-click Start and select Terminal (Admin) or Windows PowerShell (Admin).
2. Run this command, replacing program.exe with the executable name you saw on the Details page:

taskkill /f /im program.exe

3. Or, to target one specific process by its PID:

taskkill /f /pid 1234

You should see “SUCCESS: The process … has been terminated.” The /f switch forces the kill with no chance to save, so use it only on the program you meant to close. Don’t point it at unfamiliar Windows processes just because they’re busy. Some of them are essential, and killing one can crash Windows or trigger a restart.

Find what’s slowing your PC down

Fix #6: Sort the Processes page by CPU, Memory, and Disk

1. Open Task Manager and select Processes.
2. Select the CPU column heading to sort by processor use. Select it again to reverse the order.
3. Repeat with Memory, Disk, Network, and GPU.
4. Right-click any column heading to add columns like GPU engine, Power usage, or Power usage trend.

The list splits into three groups. Apps are programs with a window open. Background processes are apps and helpers running quietly, many of them in the system tray. Windows processes are the parts Windows needs to run, including lots of Service Host (svchost.exe) entries. If one of those is chewing up your processor, expand it to see which service is running inside before you do anything else.

What the numbers mean:

• High CPU: brief spikes are normal. A single process pinned at 90% or more for minutes on end is worth a look.
• High memory: only a problem when free memory runs low and Windows starts paging to disk.
• High disk: Windows Update, Defender scans, search indexing, and OneDrive sync all cause temporary spikes. If one program keeps your disk usage up to 100%, you’ll spot it here. That figure means the drive is busy, not that it’s moving data at full speed.
• High GPU: expected for games, video editing, and browsers playing hardware-accelerated video.
• High network: match it to something you know about, like a download, cloud sync, or an update.

On up-to-date Windows 11 (version 24H2 and later), Task Manager uses the same standardized CPU measurement on every page, so its numbers line up closely with third-party monitoring tools. If you want the older per-process style of CPU value, go to Details, right-click a column heading, choose Select columns, and turn on CPU Utility.

Fix #7: Put background apps in Efficiency mode (Windows 11)

Efficiency mode lowers a process’s priority so it stops competing with whatever you’re actively using. It’s Windows 11 only.

1. Open Task Manager and select Processes.
2. Right-click a background app you don’t need running at full speed, such as a chat client or updater.
3. Select Efficiency mode.
4. Confirm the prompt if one appears.

A green leaf icon appears in the Status column. To undo it, right-click the process and clear Efficiency mode. The option is grayed out for some processes and groups.

I’d skip it for security software, drivers, system processes, and anything you need running smoothly, like a game or a video call. Also, this is separate from Microsoft Edge’s own efficiency settings. Turning Efficiency mode off for an Edge process in Task Manager doesn’t change the browser’s settings.

Fix #8: Disable apps that launch at startup

If your PC is slow from the moment you sign in, too many programs are probably starting with Windows.

1. Open Task Manager and select Startup apps (called Startup on Windows 10).
2. Select the Startup impact column heading to sort the heaviest items to the top. Windows rates each one High, Medium, Low, or Not measured.

3. If an entry has an arrow beside it, expand it to see the processes it bundles. Adobe Creative Cloud, for example, can load dozens of helpers on its own.

4. Right-click an item you don’t need at sign-in and select Disable.

5. Restart your PC and check whether sign-in is faster.

Disabling an item stops it from launching automatically. It doesn’t uninstall anything, and you can still open the program yourself. You can only disable a whole entry, not individual processes inside it. If you don’t recognize an item, right-click it and choose Search online.

Leave these alone: antivirus, keyboard and touchpad utilities, audio and graphics control panels, backup or sync tools you actually use, and anything installed by your employer’s IT department. You’ll find the same toggles under Settings > Apps > Startup.

Last BIOS time, in the top-right corner, is how long your firmware spent initializing hardware before Windows started loading. Machines with several drives and add-in cards take longer here. Read more about what Last BIOS time measures.

This page is also one half of a clean boot, which starts Windows with third-party startup apps and services turned off so you can find the one causing trouble. Disabling startup apps here isn’t a clean boot on its own. You also need the Services tab in the MSCONFIG dialog: check Hide all Microsoft services, select Disable all, then restart. (MSCONFIG’s own Startup tab just points you back to Task Manager.)

Read the Performance page

The Performance page shows live graphs for your hardware. Select a component on the left to see its details on the right.

CPU

You’ll see the processor’s model, current utilization and speed, plus the number of processes, threads, and handles. Base speed, sockets, cores, logical processors, virtualization support, and cache sizes sit below the graph.

To see every core separately, right-click the graph and select Change graph to > Logical processors.

Memory

The top shows total installed RAM. Below that you’ll find memory speed (shown in MT/s on current Windows 11 builds), slots used (for example, 2 of 4), and the form factor. If In use sits near your total every day, a RAM upgrade will do more for you than any setting in Task Manager. The Paged pool and Non-paged pool figures are explained in detail in Paged Pool vs Nonpaged Pool memory.

Disk

Each drive gets its own graph. You’ll see the model, capacity, disk type, read and write speeds, and average response time. If Active time sits at 100% constantly on an old spinning hard drive, moving Windows to an SSD is usually the most noticeable speed boost you can buy for that PC.

Ethernet and Wi-Fi

Every network adapter shows up here, including a USB Wi-Fi adapter or the Ethernet port on a docking station. The graph stays flat unless you’re uploading or downloading. Send and Receive show live speeds, and the Throughput scale adjusts itself to the traffic.

GPU and NPU

Each graphics chip gets its own entry, with the brand and model at the top. The engine graphs break usage into 3D, Copy, Video Encode, and Video Decode. Driver version, DirectX version, and dedicated and shared GPU memory sit at the bottom. On PCs with a neural processing unit, newer Windows 11 builds add an NPU entry and optional NPU columns on the Processes page. Whether you see them depends on your hardware and build.

Task Manager gives you a quick overview. It doesn’t show temperatures, fan speeds, or drive health, so use your PC maker’s utility for those.

The other Task Manager pages

App history

App history shows CPU time and network use over time for Microsoft Store apps and some built-in Windows apps. Select a column heading to sort. It won’t help much with a traditional desktop program, but it’s handy for spotting an app that’s quietly burned through a metered connection.

Users

The Users page lists everyone signed in to the PC and the processes running under each account. On a single-user PC it just repeats what you already saw on Processes. On a shared family PC, it shows whether someone left a heavy program open in their session.

Administrators can right-click another user to disconnect or sign them out. Signing out closes all of that person’s apps and throws away their unsaved work, so check with them first.

Details

Details is the advanced process list, with executable names and PIDs. Right-click a process to find Set priority, Set affinity, Go to service(s), Open file location, and Properties.

I’d leave priority and affinity alone. Raising priority can starve other programs, lowering it makes the app sluggish, and restricting affinity cuts performance. The changes usually reset when the program closes anyway.

Services

If the process has a service attached, Go to service(s) opens the Services page with that service highlighted. Plenty of processes don’t have one.

1. Right-click a service.
2. Select Start, Stop, or Restart.
3. For startup type, recovery options, and dependencies, select Open Services to launch the full console.

Don’t stop a service just because you don’t recognize its name. Stopping the wrong one can knock out networking, sound, sign-in, Windows Update, or Defender. Search for it first.

When Task Manager isn’t enough

If a process keeps coming back or Task Manager only shows a vague name, these tools dig deeper:

Tool	Best for	How to open
Process Explorer (Microsoft Sysinternals)	Process trees, loaded DLLs, digital signatures, file locations	Free download from Microsoft
Resource Monitor	Detailed CPU, memory, disk, and network activity per process	resmon
Reliability Monitor	Timeline of crashes, failed updates, and driver problems	perfmon /rel
Performance Monitor	Logging counters over hours or days for recurring slowdowns	perfmon
Windows Security	Scanning a suspicious process for malware	Start > Windows Security

Task Manager isn’t a malware scanner. A strange name running from an odd folder deserves a click on End task followed by a full Defender scan. Windows 10 reached the end of regular support on October 14, 2025. If you’re still on it, you’re also missing Windows 11-only Task Manager tools like Efficiency mode, which Windows 10 never had.

Conclusion

Ctrl + Shift + Esc followed by End task handles most frozen apps, and trimming Startup apps is the single best fix for a PC that’s slow from sign-in. If you’re no longer dealing with one runaway app but the disk still sits at 100% on an aging hard drive, or an unknown process keeps relaunching from a strange folder, treat it as failing hardware or malware rather than a Task Manager problem.