Identify Cryptic Processes

You can see what's currently running on your system by launching the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del. In Windows 98 and Me, you will see a simple list of active applications. Windows XP and 2000 will also list all active processes along with their memory usage and CPU time (Figure 5). Don't worry if the System Idle process seems to be hogging the CPU; all unused CPU cycles are assigned to this process.

To identify cryptic processes with names like Ctfmon.exe, you can get help on the Internet. There are a number of Web sites that list and identify those names, such as:

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