Cool tip of the day, courtesy of persistent.info, is an easy way to always have your Windows Task Manager launch and minimized every time you reboot so that you can obsessively monitor your CPU usage (like I do):
To get the Task Manager to launch minimized at startup reliably, I’ve created a shortcut startup item with the target C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe /c start /min “Task Manager” taskmgr.exe
It works. I’ve zipped my own cmd.exe startup shortcut for you to download here. Just unzip, throw it in your startup items, and you’re good to go. Note that your startup programs are usually in the below path, unless you’ve changed it to be somewhere on your data partition with a tool like Tweak UI (a tip for another day, but something I’d recommend doing so you can comfortably reinstall your OS and not lose your startup items, among other things):
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
If you’re curious, the items in my taskbar in that screenshot are, from left to right, Trillian, Norton AntiVirus, GoToMyPc, Yahoo Desktop, Mozy, Task Manager, and Volume Control. I have other items in my task bar, which are not shown, but I’ll leave you guessing what those may be. I know, I know, the suspense is killing you.
It’s suddenly snowing like crazy this morning, so it’s starting off to be a very good day.
1 response so far ↓
1 shrey // Jan 25, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I use Process Explorer by Sysinternals instead of the Windows Task Manager. It provides more information on the processes with more display options. The one piece of information that I find crucial is the files locked by a process. And, of course, you can search for a string so if you are trying to delete a file but Windows claims it is locked you can find out which is the offending application. Oh, and it’s free.