Microsoft Windows, which comes preloaded on most new PCs, is a graphical operating system that lets you read and store files, run software programs, play games and connect to the Internet. It was developed for home and professional computers.
Versions since XP have added features like Cortana, a digital personal assistant and Chromium-based web browser Microsoft Edge. The latest version, 11, has a redesigned Task View and supports separate wallpaper for each desktop.
The Hardware Resources
Most of the information that windows system collects and stores on your computer is hardware related. This includes the processor, baseboard, RAM and other built-in hardware components of your computer. It also collects and stores information on the different types of devices that you have installed on your computer.
For example, if an application uses a lot of memory, when the program closes, Windows is supposed to give that memory back so that other programs can use it. If this doesn’t happen, you will begin to get alerts indicating that “virtual memory is full” and that you should close down some of your programs to free up some space.
Another hardware information stored by Windows is a list of IRQs (interrupt request) that are allocated to various devices and hardware components in the computer. Each IRQ has a number that identifies it. The IRQ number is used to determine the priority in which hardware in the computer will use the corresponding interrupt.
The Software Environment
The windows desktop is a workspace that allows users to interact with programs, tools and documents installed on their devices. It can also be used to configure various operating system components and secondary elements such as time, language, etc.
Microsoft has produced several different versions of windows since the first consumer release in 1995. The earliest Windows packages were aimed at business users, while subsequent releases focused on consumers and multimedia developers.
With the 2001 release of XP, Microsoft began unifying its various Windows packages under a single banner. The new XP standard included multitasking support for legacy MS-DOS software and more practical interfaces for application, file and memory management.
Additional features include a sandbox for running suspicious or untrusted software, Bitlocker encryption and group policy management. It supports systems with more than 128 GB of RAM and includes a hypervisor, similar to third party virtualization software like VirtualBox. It also supports a range of network protocols and offers flexible, customizable update installation and postponement options.
The Processes
There are many different kinds of processes running on windows system. Some are useful, others may be causing problems. It is important to understand the different kinds of processes and what they are doing.
For example, a high number of processes could mean that the system is doing something difficult such as scanning the computer for viruses. It is also possible that some malware is creating copies of system processes and naming them after popular applications such as Google Chrome.
The Processes tab displays the applications and Windows system processes that are running on your computer. You can sort the list by clicking a header such as CPU or Memory Usage to view the processes in that category from highest to lowest usage. You can also use the view options at the bottom of the screen to expand or collapse different groups of processes. This feature is especially helpful when you need to quickly identify which processes are using the most CPU resources.
The Memory
If a program’s demand for memory exceeds its dedicated physical memory, Windows will store some data in a swap file (also called a page file) on the hard drive. The OS then swaps the data back into RAM when needed. This can cause a delay and lower system performance. If this happens frequently, it may be time to invest in more RAM.
Each process has its own private address space that other processes can’t access. Each process also has a working set of memory that’s actively used.
You can view your available system memory in the Task Manager’s Details view by clicking the Processes tab and selecting the More Detail option. This will sort the list of processes by their RAM usage, making it easy to spot any heavy users and close them down. You can also see a summary of memory usage in the Performance tab.