ah yes the task manager something that's probably saved us all countless times when
a program freezes you can't close it you bring up the trusty task manager and it kills it no
questions asked and while many of us probably take task manager for granted it didn't always
exist someone actually wrote it and his name was David Plummer he worked for Microsoft back in
like the 90s and he actually posted in the tech support subreddit on reddit where he basically
posted a bunch of different background info about how the task manager came to be some interesting
tips that you might not a note about so that's what we're gonna do we're gonna read through his
post I thought it's definitely worth it it's pretty interesting so here's the post it's
called I wrote task manager and I just remembered something and something turns out to be a whole
bunch of stuff so he says figured I should write this stuff down before I forget it all and we're
better for task manager than tech support and it's funny he says here's some task manager lore which
is short for folklore it's like some backstory he says um Microsoft Redmond 93 developer that wrote
task manager at home in my den in about 1994 and then the NT silverback devs let me check it into
the main tree even though I was a greenhorn or basically a noob at the time so that meant I got
to bring it into work and polish it up and make it an official part of Windows where it remains
to this day so this guy basically just wrote in his house and these senior devs actually let him
put it into Windows where it still is there he also points out that everything he's about to
say is based on the XP version because he left a long time ago probably around that time but it's
still the core app underneath so it's possible that not necessarily everything is 100% true or
still up-to-date based on this so anyway here's the tips he says in no particular order if task
manager ever hangs or crashes start another by pressing control ship escape win log on will
look for an existing instance and try to revive it for up to 10 seconds if the old task manager
the one that's freezing doesn't start making sense by responding with a secret code within that time
another one will be launched and that way you'll never end up without a task manager as long as
there are some system resources available so that is not something I knew and that's definitely
interesting I have seen task manager on very rare occasions freeze up it's like the last of
all hope is gone but it's good to know that you can actually just start another one and then it
will restart itself if it hangs next he says task manager will load in reduced mode if resources
are short like only loading the process Paige if that's what's needed to get going it's one of the
very few apps that won't just fail and bail when things go wrong so that's also very interesting I
had no idea that I had a reduced resource mode so it seems like even if basically your entire
computers freezing up it's got a memory leak it's no RAM left it'll still try to boot up so you can
cancel out anything in there next if task manager ever becomes internally corrupted kill or close
it then restart it while holding down ctrl alt shift and task manager will reset all internal
settings to factory-fresh if it sees that key combo its startup same works for every app
I've ever written by the way I think now I'm not 100% sure if this is still true because I tried
it myself and running Windows 10 Pro and I did do this ctrl alt shift and it did not reset the task
manager settings although I have seen on other posts on the internet of people saying it did work
so I don't know what it is with my computer maybe it's just broken but you can try it yourself it
might work next another tip e says if your title bars disappear on the task manager I guess and
you just have one of the graphs double-click the dead client space to switch back to normal mode
so that's just some blank space somewhere this no title bar mode is a mode I added to follow the NT
clock where you could remove borders as well but it confused more people than it ever helped them
sure now I've never seen this but I guess if you ever come across that issue now you know how to
fix it just double click somewhere this one's more of a fun fact he says I initially drew the meters
as seven-segment leds what he's talking about here is with the task manager it also will show
you different system resource amounts like CPU usage and seven-segment leds are like be digital
clock basically numbers that you see so apparently at one point instead of just the regular numerals
he had those numbers showing as the seven-segment leds but then he goes on to say but that wasn't
localizable to all cultures for example how do you do right-to-left reading for seven-segment
leds for some countries like Saudi Arabia which read right to left so basically he's just saying
where countries might read from right to left or countries that don't use those certain numerals
that can't be displayed on that type of display he had to change it to something else so this didn't
last more than one version now here's a tip I new control ship escape launch the task manager but I
didn't know it went further than that he says ctrl shift escape launch task manager without
any help from the shell so if the shell or the Explorer is dead use this key combo to bring up
task manager and then restart or reset the shell even if your system tray is missing and gone this
combo should started so what he's saying is even if the task bar is gone the Windows Explorer is
gone you can still bring up the task manager with that key combo and then you can use file
run to basically restart Explorer if you have to so that's really cool to know that you can
basically start task manager from anywhere even if a lot of the system is broken next he says
if the shell can't start something or is hung try task manager it has a mode where it will
load without any references to the shell 32 DLL and allow you to start programs like CMD without
the Start menu so that's really interesting the shell he's talking about is basically like the
user interface I guess you can think of it like Windows Explorer the Start menu so you might
think oh if you want to start command prompt or some other program you normally have to go in and
find it in its Start menu or click a shortcut but if none of that is available then you can
still run it just using the task manager this next one I did no but you might not have he says you
can find the binary for any executing process in the process table by right-clicking and pick show
file location and what he's talking about here the binary is just like the executable file the
program file basically so you can right-click show open file location' and it'll take you
exactly where that file is running from if it's a process in the task manager and then he points
out you can also search for it online obviously if you're not sure what a program is doing but
he doesn't know if you'll always be able to find useful info and everything next interestingly he
says there should be nothing that task manager can't kill it will even escalate privilege and
if you have it enable debug privilege to attach to and kill apps that way if needed if task manager
can't kill it you've got a kernel problem which is basically like a really deep problem in that
case you might have to run like SFC scan now to fix any Windows files or something like that now
on that point at the bottom of the post he does make an amendment on that he says on the notion
that there are some things the task manager can't kill there were post XP for sure but they were
intentional limits I remember something about journalists making news by using task manager
to kill the root logon session for example which bug check the machine intentionally but the fact
that you could blue screen windows and T didn't look good I suspect so they likely started to
protect people from themselves by disallowing killing win32 K dot cysts and other essential
components so what he's saying here is at some point task manager could literally kill everything
even the windows processes in core files itself and apparently people got win of that and started
to I guess right dumb articles about it saying hold you can use Windows to us murders or kill
windows and ruin the computer or something like that and then they implemented intentional limits
which would basically prevent task manager from killing windows and blue screen in the computer
which I guess makes sense but it is kind of unfortunate that you know it was all-powerful
and then they had that limited because people were dumb going back to where we were he says a
lot of people don't seem to know you can add many additional columns remove others drag them around
to reorder etc so you can do that I probably showed you that before if you want to add more
columns to the task manager this one's more of a fun fact I'm not gonna read the whole thing
because it's pretty complicated but basically he's saying there's a Windows class in the code called
Dave's frame wind proc which its purpose is to basically make it so you can resize the window
without flickering and stuff which I guess was a challenge and he put it in there especially it to
fix it here's more of a fun fact about the history of it he says task manager is one of the apps I'm
most proud of because it's probably the first or at least most visually complicated app to ever
be fully resizable in all dimensions without any flickr up until then i was hardcore about memory
and flickr in my day so it was under 100 K for the Exe and never flash or crashed which was my
thing having the GDI 32 user 32 guys down there sure helped I don't know what that last point
is but basically he's just saying that he made it super efficient and it turns out this David
Plummer guy was way more prolific than even just making the task manager because he says I also
wrote flash ported space-cadet pinball if you guys know that game he wrote that he wrote zip folders
worked on the Start menu the shell calc the old 32 product activation and some other stuff I was
in ms-dos before that but I doubt anyone is still supporting ms-dos so this guy who worked on a ton
of stuff that all of us probably know and love to this day and then you can see at the end of
the post you just added a few clarifications on some of his points so I definitely think it's
really cool et wrote all this up some of the stuff I already knew but many of you might not have and
definitely some things that I had no idea was even the case with task manager he also posted a
link in the thread about he has a YouTube channel it's called Dave's garage so definitely going to
shout that out if you guys want to check that out I'll put that link in the description if you want
to see this guy's YouTube channel he says yes he still does coding everyday which is really
cool and I will throw in one personal tip for the task manager because it's my favorite tip
that I think everyone should enable if you go to the task manager and click options select always
on top that will make sure whenever you do launch task manager including using that control shift
escape one that he talked about it will make sure the task manager always opens on the top of all
windows so this is really great if you're running like a fullscreen window game or something and it
freezes you can be sure that the task manager will actually pop up in front of it so you can use it
to close the frozen program sometimes if you don't have it always on top then the task manager will
open up except it's beneath the window that's frozen and then you can't access it so that's
just one thing to do anyway so hopefully you guys found this video interesting let me know you think
down in the comments and if you want to continue watch in the next video I'd recommend is talking
about the brand new windows terminal you guys might not have heard that Microsoft created a new
version of the command prompt you can think of it and do UI it's really cool just check it out I'll
put that link right here so thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you in the next video