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The Windows 8 Task Manager

The Windows 8 Task Manager

As we mentioned during the Windows 8 keynote at //build/, every 15 years or so we choose to update Task Manager. Of course that was said in jest as we have incrementally improved the utility in just about every release of Windows. For Windows 8, we took a new look at the tool and thought through some new scenarios and a new way of tuning the tool for "both ends of the spectrum" in terms of end-users and those that need very fine-grained control over what is going on with their PC. Ryan Haveson, the group program manager of our In Control of Your PC team, authored this post. Note: This post is about Task Manager, not about closing Metro style applications :-) 

--Steven

We are really excited to share some of the improvements we are making to the Task Manager in Windows 8. Task Manager is one of the most widely used apps, and it has a long history. It showed up in early versions of Windows as a simple utility to close and switch between programs, and has had functionality added to it through several releases to make it what it is today.

Figure 1: Windows 3.0 Task List

Figure 2: Windows NT 4.0 Task Manager (now with “new task”)

Figure 3: Windows XP Task Manager (with new Networking and Users tabs)

Figure 4: Windows 7 Task Manager

Because Task Manager is so widely used, we knew that any changes we made would be noticed, so of course we were both excited and cautious about the effort. At the beginning, there were a few key problems that we knew we wanted to address:

• Build a tool that was well designed, thoughtful, and modern. After all, even a technical tool can benefit from a focus on design.
• Fill some of the functionality gaps that drove some of our most technical customers to use other tools such as Resource Monitor and Process Explorer.
• Organize and highlight the richness of data available to make it more elegant and clear for those who want access to a new level of data.

How do people use Task Manager?

To really make Task Manager great at what it currently does, we wanted to first understand how people were using it. Over the years, it had grown to support many different scenarios. As of Windows 7, you could use Task Manager to close applications, to find out detailed data about your processes, to start or stop services, to monitor your network adaptor, or even to perform basic system administrator tasks for currently logged on users. That is a lot of functionality.

Because of the investments we made in telemetry, we had some pretty good data to start with. We combined this with individual customer interviews and observation in the research lab to understand what people were doing with Task Manager and why they were doing it.

Figure 5: Which tabs are people using?

This data is pretty interesting. What it shows is that people are spending most of their time using the first two tabs, which are pivoted around views of applications and processes. Although it is not surprising, it was interesting to see that the usage was roughly evenly split between the Applications tab and the Process tab. This indicates that there must be some significant detail lacking in the Applications tab, which is causing people to go to the Process tab. So, next we looked at how people were using the Process tab to understand what they were doing there.

Figure 6: Many users sort the process view on resource usage

When we looked at this data, and then correlated it with interviews and observations of users in our research labs, we found that people were using the process tab either to look for something that was not on the applications list (e.g. a background or system process), or to see which processes were using the most resources.

So next we looked at what actions people take in Task Manager.

Figure 7: The goal is often to close or “kill” an app or process
Click to view a larger version of this chart

Looking at the data and talking with customers, we determined that the most common usage of the tool was to simply end or “kill” an application or a process.

Goals of the new Task Manager

Based on all of the data and our background research, we decided to focus energy on three key goals:

• Optimize Task Manager for the most common scenarios. Focus on the scenarios that the data points to: (1) use the applications tab to find and close a specific application, or (2) go to the processes tab, sort on resource usage, and kill some processes to reclaim resources.
• Use modern information design to achieve functional goals. Build a tool that is thoughtful and modern by focusing on information design and data visualization to help achieve the functional scenario goals.
• Don’t remove functionality. While there are some notable core scenarios, there is a really long list of other, less frequent usage scenarios for Task Manager. We explicitly set a goal to not remove functionality, but rather to augment, enhance, and improve.

A key issue we intended to address was how we could add all of the interesting new functionality without overwhelming users. To solve this, we pivoted around a "More/Fewer details" button similar to the new copy file dialog model.

Figure 8: Fewer details view

Figure 9: More details view

This model allowed us to optimize the default view (“Fewer details”) around the core scenario of finding an application and closing it. It also allowed us to add much more detail in the other view because it would only show up when someone asked for it. In the “More details” view we decided to stay with the existing tabbing model of Task Manager and focus on improving the content of each of the tabs. This would help us to augment, enhance, and improve what we already had, without removing functionality.

Scenario #1: Ending processes quickly and efficiently

We know from many third-party tools (or tools like sysinternals Process Explorer) there are many things we could add to Task Manager for power users, but we knew we had to first address the mainstream users because we didn’t want to create something that would overwhelm the majority of our customers. We will of course continue to value third-party tools as they allow for specialization and unique innovation around this and many tasks. For the default view, we designed a minimalist experience that appeals to the needs of the broadest customer base and most common scenario. When you launch Task Manager for the first time in Windows 8, you see a very clean view of your running apps. We made the default view great at one thing: killing misbehaving apps. And we removed everything that did not directly support that core scenario.

 Figure 10: Default view of Task Manager in “Windows 8”

The value of the default view is all about what we took out. We removed everything not focused on the core task of killing apps, which makes the design focused and efficient. Specifically:

• We took out the tabs from this view, since they distract from the core scenario.
• We removed the menu bar from the default view.
• This view shows just the apps, and removes individual windows that can’t be killed anyway.
• We took out things that clutter the experience, such as resource usage stats and technical concepts that most users don’t understand.
• No double prompts. If you click ”End task” we don’t ask you, “Are you sure?”, we just kill the app, and quickly! (But be careful, because we also won’t prompt you to save!)

Check out how much cleaner and more focused the new Task Manager is compared to the Windows 7 Task Manager with the same applications and windows opened:

 
Figure 11: Windows 7 and Windows 8 Task Managers, compared

After taking out all of the extras, you are left with a tool that is great at one thing: killing a misbehaving app. And this is perfect for many users who are experiencing the pain of a “not responding” app that won’t go away using the app’s Close button.

Scenario #2: Diagnosing performance issues

A lot of what is new with Task Manager is shown only when you go to the “More details” view. This is the realm of the power user, so keep in mind that mainstream users may never want to get into this level of detail, and all of their needs should be met by the ”Fewer details” view above.

Here is what you will see in this new view:

Figure 12: The new processes tab and the heat map

The heat map

The most noticeable difference in the new processes tab is the new heat map, which represents different values with color. Our telemetry data told us that it was very common for users to go to the process tab, sort by CPU or memory utilization, and then look for applications consuming more resources than expected. The nice thing about a heat map is that it allows you to monitor anomalies across multiple resources (network, disk, memory, and CPU utilization) all at the same time, without having to sort the data. It also allows you to find the hot spot instantly without needing to read numbers or understand concepts or specific units. In usability studies we used an eye-tracking system to test what users looked at when presented with various ways of visualizing this information. This helped us narrow our choices to a design that efficiently draws user’s eyes to the most significant resource problems. Below you can see the eye movement of a participant in one of our eye-tracking studies overlaid on top of a screen shot of what he was looking at. The red dot indicates a place where his eye paused, and the lines show where his eye had quickly moved from previously.

Download this video to view it in your favorite media player: 
High quality MP4 | Lower quality MP4

Network and disk counters

Many power users supplement their usage of Task Manager with other tools such as Resource Monitor simply because in the past Task Manager did not show per-process network and disk attribution. This was a gap, when you consider that a spinning disk or multiple applications competing for network bandwidth are the root cause of many perceptible PC performance issues. The new Task Manager now shows these resources at the same level of detail as memory and CPU.

Lighting up the resource usage

One of the biggest causes of PC performance issues is resource contention. When a particular resource is being used at a rate above a threshold number, the column header will light up to draw your attention to it. Think of this as a warning indicator, letting you know a good place to start looking if you are experiencing performance issues. Below, you can see that the CPU column header is highlighted to draw your attention to the fact that you may have multiple applications competing for CPU time.

Figure 13: Resource usage indicators

Grouping by applications, background processes, and Windows processes

A big challenge with today’s Task Manager is that it is hard to know which processes correspond to an application (apps are generally safe to kill), which are Windows OS processes (killing some of these can cause a blue screen), and which are miscellaneous background processes that may need to be explored more deeply. The new Task Manager shows processes grouped by type, so it is easy to keep these separated while still providing an ungrouped view for situations where you need it.

Figure 14: Grouping by process type

Friendly names for background processes (and services, and everything else)

Looking at the screen shot above, do you see the line item for "Print driver host for applications"? In the old Task Manager, this showed up as “splwow64.exe”.

But if you still want to see the executable name, of course you can add it back as an optional column.

Grouping top-level windows by app

One of the most distracting parts of the old Task Manager is that the Applications tab was a flat list that included all of the top-level windows from all processes in the system. While the list of top-level windows is interesting information to have, it is often overwhelming to look at and sometimes a single window cannot be killed without closing all the other windows for that process. To address this, the new Task Manager now groups top-level windows under their parent process. It allows for a much cleaner view for typical usage, helps you focus on killable processes, process resource usage, and allows you to see which windows are owned by each process so you know what will be closed if you kill it.

Figure 15: Grouping top-level windows by process

What’s a fussvc.exe?

Have you ever looked through the process list, seen something like “fussvc.exe” and wondered what it was? Adding friendly names was a good first step to resolving this problem (fusssvc.exe is actually the Fast User Switching Utility Service), but of course, to really find out what this process is, you need to search the web. The new Task Manager integrates a search context menu on right-click, so you can go directly to your default search engine (which you can customize) to see more details and relevant information. This can make a huge difference when deciding whether a background process is doing something useful or just wasting cycles.

Figure 16: Search the web for details on obscure processes

Figure 17: Search results for “fussvc.exe Fast User Switching Utility Service”

Service host details and friendly names

If you open up Windows 7 Task Manager to the Processes tab and select “Show process from all users,” you will probably see eight seemingly identical instances of “svchost.exe”. This is one of the most commonly noted "not very informative" sources of information we provided. Of course, some of you know that this is really just a service host process and you can add the PID column, go to the services tab, sort by PID, see which services correlate to that PID, and then reverse-look-up friendly names for each of the services… but that is a lot of work (and not everybody knows this)! With the new Task Manager, we show all of the services grouped by process with friendly names for each of them, so you instantly can see what is going on when an instance of svchost is consuming a lot of resources:

Figure 18: Service host grouping and details

As you can see, we added quite a lot to the new Task Manager (and we only showed you the first tab!). Task Manager was a unique opportunity for user experience designers and researchers working together with technical program managers and engineers to create a clean, organized, and efficient design. We made it more streamlined for mainstream users, and more detailed for power users.

I will leave you with a quick demo where you can see what it looks like in action.

Source : www.howtogeek.com

Windows 8 : How to Add Shutdown / Restart / Sleep to Metro Start Screen

How to Add Shutdown / Restart / Sleep to the Windows 8 Metro Start Screen

If you have installed the Developer Preview of Windows 8, you probably have discovered the rather obscure method of shutting down the system. There is an easier way of shutting down, restarting, sleeping, and hibernating your computer. You can add tiles to the Windows 8 Metro Start screen that allow you to perform these tasks with one click.

To begin, click the Desktop tile on the Start screen to access the Desktop.

Right-click on the Desktop and select New | Shortcut from the popup menu.

Enter the following command in the Type the location of the item edit box and click Next.

shutdown.exe -s -t 00

Enter a name for the shortcut in the Type a name for this shortcut edit box and click Finish.

The default icon is not very representative of what the shortcut does, so let’s change it. 

To do so, right-click on the shortcut and select Properties.

The Shortcut tab on the Properties dialog box displays. Click Change Icon.

Because the shutdown.exe program you specified has no icons associated with it, the following message displays. Click OK.

By default, the icons in the shell32.dll file display. You can use the Browse button to select another .exe, .dll, or .ico file, but the shell32.exe file has many icons available. We selected a power symbol icon. Click OK once you have selected your icon.

The selected icon displays on the Properties dialog box. Click OK on the dialog box to close it.

The shortcut has to be copied to another directory to be available on the Start screen, so, copy the shortcut on the desktop.

Paste the shortcut into the following directory:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

You can either copy the path above and paste it into the address bar in Explorer or you can navigate to the directory. If you can see the ProgramData directory, see the note below.

NOTE: The ProgramData directory is a hidden directory. To gain access to it, click the Hidden items check box in the Show/hide group on the View tab.

Paste the shortcut into the specified directory. You will probably see the following dialog box when you try to paste the file. Click Continue to give permission to paste the file into the directory.

You should see a Shut down tile on the Start screen. One click on this tile will shut down your system.

If you don’t see the Shut down tile on the Start screen, you can search for it and pin it to the Start screen. To find the shortcut, move your mouse over the Start icon in the lower, left corner on the desktop to display the Start menu. Select Search.

NOTE: If you are using a touch screen, you can swipe from the right side of the screen to the left to access the Start menu.

NOTE: You can also access the Start menu in the same way on the Metro Start screen.

The Search panel displays on the right side of the screen. Scroll down and select Apps from the list. Enter “shut down” (or the name you gave your shortcut) in the Search Apps edit box. Press Enter or click the magnifying glass.

The Shut down shortcut displays on the left side of the screen. Right-click the shortcut. The options for the shortcut display in the lower, right corner of the desktop (instead of on a popup menu, like in Windows 7, and earlier). Click the Pin icon. You should now see the Shut down tile on the Start screen.

NOTE: Press Escape to exit the search and go back to the desktop.

To add tiles for Restart, Lock Workstation, Hibernate, and Sleep, enter the following commands create new shortcuts and enter the following commands on the first screen of the Shortcut wizard.

• Restart Computer: shutdown.exe -r -t 00
• Lock Workstation: rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
• Hibernate Computer: rundll32.exe powrProf.dll,SetSuspendState
• Sleep Computer: rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0

The rundll32.exe file does have an icon available; however, you may want to change it. Use the Browse button to access a file with more icons. The shell32.dll file is located in C:\Windows\System32.

NOTE: For the Hibernate and Sleep options, make sure that the hardware in your computer support these options and that they are enabled.

Source : www.howtogeek.com

How To Secure Your Wi-Fi Network Against Intrusion

Insecure Wi-Fi is the easiest way for people to access your home network, leech your internet, and cause you serious headaches with more malicious behavior. Read on as we show you how to secure your home Wi-Fi network.

Why Secure Your Network?

In a perfect world you could leave your Wi-Fi networks wide open to share with any passing Wi-Fi starved travelers who desperately needed to check their email or lightly use your network. In reality leaving your Wi-Fi network open create unnecessary vulnerability wherein non-malicious users can sponge up lots of our bandwidth inadvertently and malicious users can pirate using our IP as cover, probe your network and potentially get access to your personal files, or even worse. What does even worse look like?  In the case of Matt Kostolnikit looks like a year of hell as your crazy neighbor, via your hacked Wi-Fi network, uploads child pornography in your name using your IP address and sends death threats to the Vice President of the United States. Mr. Kolstolnik was using crappy and outdated encryption with no other defensive measures in place; we can only imagine that a better understanding of Wi-Fi security and a little network monitoring would have saved him a huge headache.

Securing Your Wi-Fi Network

Securing your Wi-Fi network is a multi-step affair. You need to weigh each step and decide if the increased security is worth the sometimes increased hassle accompanying the change. To help you weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each step we’ve divided them up into relative order of importance as well as highlighted the benefits, the drawbacks, and the tools or resources you can use to stress test your own security. Don’t rely on our word that something is useful; grab the available tools and try to kick down your own virtual door.

Note: It would be impossible for us to include step-by-step instructions for every brand/model combination of routers out there. Check the brand and model number on your router and download the manual from the manufacturer’s website in order to most effectively follow our tips. If you have never accessed your router’s control panel or have forgotten how, now is the time to download the manual and give yourself a refresher.

Update Your Router and Upgrade to Third Party Firmware If Possible: At minimum you need to visit the web site for the manufacture of your router and make sure there are no updates. Router software tends to be pretty stable and releases are usually few and far between. If your manufacturer has released an update (or several) since you purchased your router it’s definitely time to upgrade.

Even better, if you’re going to go through the hassle of updating, is to update to one of the awesome third-party router firmwares out there like DD-WRT or Tomato. You can check out our guides to installing DD-WRT here and Tomato here.  The third party firmwares unlock all sorts of great options including an easier and finer grain control over security features.

The hassle factor for this modification is moderate. Anytime you flash the ROM on your router you risk bricking it. The risk is really small with third-party firmware and even smaller when using official firmware from your manufacturer. Once you’ve flashed everything the hassle factor is zero and you get to enjoy a new better, faster, and more customizable router.

Change Your Router’s Password: Every router ships with a default login/password combination. The exact combination varies from model to model but it’s easy enough to look up the default that leaving it unchanged is just asking for trouble. Open Wi-Fi combined with the default password is essentially leaving your entire network wide open. You can check out default password lists here, here, and here.

The hassle factor for this modification is extremely low and it’s foolish not to do it.

Turn On and/or Upgrade Your Network Encryption: In the above example we gave, Mr. Kolstolnik had turned on the encryption for his router. He made the mistake of selecting WEP encryption, however, which is the lowest encryption on the Wi-Fi encryption totem pole. WEP is easy to crack using freely available tools such as WEPCrack and BackTrack. If you happened to read the entire article about Mr. Kolstolnik’s problems with his neighbors you’ll note that it took his neighbor two weeks, according to the authorities, to break the WEP encryption. That’s such a long span of time for such a simple task we have to assume that he also had to teach himself how to read and operate a computer too.

Wi-Fi encryption comes in several flavors for home use such as WEP, WPA, and WPA2. In addition WPA/WPA2 can be further subdivided as WPA/WPA2 with TKIP (a 128-bit key is generated per packet) and AES (a different 128-bit encryption). If possible you want to use WP2 TKIP/AES as AES is not as widely adopted as TKIP. Allowing your router to use both will enable to use the superior encryption when available.

The only situation where upgrading the encryption of your Wi-Fi network may pose a problem is with legacy devices. If you have devices manufactured before 2006 it’s possible that, without firmware upgrades or perhaps not at all, they will be unable to access any network but an open or WEP encrypted network. We’ve phased out such electronics or hooked them up to the hard LAN via Ethernet (we’re looking at you original Xbox).

The hassle factor for this modification is low and–unless you have a legacy Wi-Fi device you can’t live without–you won’t even notice the change.

Changing/Hiding Your SSID: Your router shipped with a default SSID; usually something simple like “Wireless” or the brand name like “Netgear”. There’s nothing wrong with leaving it set as the default. If you live in a densely populated area, however, it would make sense to change it to something different in order to distinguished it from the 8 “Linksys” SSIDs you see from your apartment. Don’t change it to anything that identifies you. Quite a few of our neighbors have unwisely changed their SSIDs to things like APT3A or 700ElmSt . A new SSID should make it easier for you to identify your router from the list and not easier for everyone in the neighborhood to do so.

Don’t bother hiding your SSID. Not only does it provide no boost in security but it makes your devices work harder and burn more battery life. We debunked the hidden SSID myth here if you’re interested in doing more detailed reading. The short version is this: even if you “hide” your SSID it is still being broadcast and anyone using apps like inSSIDer or Kismet can see it.

The hassle factor for this modification is low. All you’ll need to do is change your SSID once (if at all) to increase recognition in a router-dense environment.

Filter Network Access by MAC Address:

Media Access Control addresses, or MAC address for short, is a unique ID assigned to every network interface you’ll encounter. Everything you can hook up to your network has one: your XBOX 360, laptop, smartphone, iPad, printers, even the Ethernet cards in your desktop computers. The MAC address for devices is printed on a label affixed to it and/or on the box and documentation that came with the device. For mobile devices you can usually find the MAC address within the menu system (on the iPad, for example, it’s under the Settings –> General –> About menu and on Android phones you’ll find it Settings –> About Phone –> Status menu).

One of the easiest ways to check the MAC addresses of your devices, besides simply reading the label on them, is to check out the MAC list on your router after you’ve upgraded your encryption and logged all your devices back in. If you’ve just changed your password you can be nearly certain the iPad you see attached to the Wi-Fi node is yours.

Once you have all the MAC addresses you can set up your router to filter based on them. Then it won’t be enough for a computer to be in range of the Wi-Fi node and have the password/break the encryption, the device intruding on the network will also need to have the MAC address of a device on your router’s whitelist.

Although MAC filtering is a solid way to increase your security it is possible for somebody to sniff your Wi-Fi traffic and then spoof the MAC address of their device to match one on your network. Using tools like Wireshark, Ettercap, and Nmap as well as the aforementionedBackTrack. Changing the MAC address on a computer is simple. In Linux it’s two commands at the command prompt, with a Mac it’s just about as easy, and under Windows you can use a simple app to swap it like Etherchange or MAC Shift.

The hassle factor for this modification is moderate-to-high. If you use the same devices on your network over and over with little change up then it’s a small hassle to set up the initial filter. If you frequently have guests coming and going that want to hop on your network it’s a huge hassle to always be logging into your router and adding their MAC addresses or temporarily turning off the MAC filtering.

One last note before we leave MAC addresses: if you’re particularly paranoid or you suspect someone is messing around with your network you can run applications like AirSnare andKismet to set up alerts for MACs outside your white list.

Adjust the Output Power of Your Router: This trick is usually only available if you’ve upgraded the firmware to a third party version. Custom firmware allows you to dial up or down the output of your router. If you’re using your router in a one bedroom apartment you can easily dial the power way down and still get a signal everywhere in the apartment. Conversely if the nearest house is 1000 feet away, you can crank the power up to enjoy Wi-Fi out in your hammock.

The hassle factor for this modification is low; it’s a one time modification. If your router doesn’t support this kind of adjustment, don’t sweat it. Lowering the output power of your router is just a small step that makes it necessary for someone to be physically closer to your router to mess with it. With good encryption and the other tips we’ve shared, such a small tweak has a relatively small benefit.

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Once you’ve upgraded your router password and upgraded your encryption (let alone done anything else on this list) you’ve done 90% more than nearly every Wi-Fi network owner out there.

Congratulations, you’ve hardened your network enough to make almost everyone else look like a better target! Have a tip, trick, or technique to share? Let’s hear about your Wi-Fi security methods in the comments.

Source : www.howtogeek.com

Author : Jason Fitzpatrick