Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

A key tool that you will use to manage system processes and applications is Task
Manager. You can access Task Manager using any of the following methods:
Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
Press CTRL+ALT+DEL and then select the Task Manager prompt
Type taskmgr into the Run utility or the command prompt.
Right-click the taskbar and select task manager from the menu as shown here.

The Windows Task Manager window should appear.

Right click on any application to bring up a useful menu of
options for that application.

Exercise #1
Start two separate instances of the notepad
application using the Run utility. Confirm that the
Task Manager Window shows both applications
running. Select one of the notepad applications and
then click the Switch to button. Describe what
happens.
Then click the End Task button and describes what
happens.
Finally start an instance of WordPad using the
New Task button.

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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

Exerise #2
Select the processes tab. Identify the process that is
using most of the CPU time. Comment on what this
may be the case.

Exercise #3
Write, compile and run a simple c program with an
infinite loop while it performs some simple math
calculation ( a runaway process).
While it is running check the Processes tab of the
Task Manager and identify your runaway process
and write down the percentage of CPU time its
using. Discuss the result.
Finally select the runaway process and right click
and navigate to the Set Priority menu option and set
the priority to low. Discuss the result.

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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

Exercise #4:
Select the Performance Tab. Double click on the
graph to enlarge as required. Select the menu item
View|Show Kernel Times to add an additional
kernel related red line to the graph.
Click and hold the left mouse button over the
Task Manager window title. Move the window
rapidly over around the screen and watch the
CPU usage graph change. Discuss why this may
be happening.
Also note the Physical memory and kernel
memory reported. Calculate the percentage of
total memory used by the Kernel. Start 10
instances of Wordpad and describe and discuss what happens to kernel level memory.
Beneath the graphs you'll find several lists of statistics. These statistics provide the
following information:
Totals
o Provides information on CPU usage. Handles shows the number
input/output 0/0) handles in use. Threads show the number of threads use.
Processes show the number of processes in use.
Physical Memory
o Provides information on the total RAM on the system Total shows the
amount of physical RAM. Available shows the RAM not currently being
used and available for use. System Cache shows the amount memory used
for system caching.
Commit Charge
o Provides information on the total memory used by the operating system.
Total lists all physical and virtual memory currently in use. Limit lists the
total physical and virtual memory available. Peak lists the maximum
memory used by the system since bootup.
Kernel Memory
o Provides information on the memory used by the operating system kernel.
Critical portions of kernel memory must operate in RAM and can't be
paged to virtual memory. This type of kernel memory is list as Nonpaged..
The rest of kernel memory can be paged to virtual memory and is listed as
Paged. The total amount of memory used by the kernel is listed under
Total.
Why/How is the value of Limit in Current Charge greater than Total Physical Memory?
Will the amount of paged memory always be greater than Nonpaged memory?

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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

Identify processes running on the system.

Task Manger

Identifying the processes

With the aid of http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm

identify and understand all the tasks (aka processes) that are running on your machine.
In particular identify those tasks which could be
1. Unwise to stop
2. Stopped
3. Appear suspicious
Your hand-up must identify and describe the processes and state your opinion as to
whether it is type 1, 2 or 3

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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

The System Utility

Windows 2000 / XP
o Control Panel | System
o Right Click My Computer and select Properties

The System utility helps you manage system environments, profiles and properties.
Although the Computer Management console is great for remote management of network
resources, you also need a tool that gives you fine control over system environment
settings and properties. This is where the System utility comes into the picture. You'll use
this utility to
Configure application performance, virtual memory, and registry settings Manage
system and user environment variables
Set system startup and recovery options
Manage hardware and user profiles
Virtual Memory

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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

Consider the Advanced Tab | Performance Settings.| Virtual Memory. Virtual memory
allows you to extend the amount of available memory on the system. Intel 386 (and later)
processors write RAM to disks using a technique called paging. When paging is initiated
a certain amount of RAM (possibly that which is least frequently used) is swapped out
onto the hard-disk later it can be retrieved and placed back in RAM as required. The
place where Windows stores the RAM contents on the hard disk is pagefile.sys otherwise
known as the swapfile. If you have multiple drives (e.g. a C:\ drive and a D:\ drive for
example) note that Windows only creates a swapfile on the primary (i.e. that one that
contains the OS) partition. Other drives paging files must be created manually. If you
wish to see your page file then you will have to tell Windows to (a) Show hidden files
and folders and (b) not to hide protected operating system files in the folder options. Set
is using the View menu item in Explorer.

For best performance the following is recommended:

Set the initial paging file size equal to the maximum size. If the systems grows the
paging file as it needs then the result is a fragmented page file (this results in slower
system performance). A reasonable size for this file is three times the amount of actual
RAM1. On my laptop I have ~1GB RAM and a 3GB swapfile.
Exercise:
Part 1

Check that the PC you are using has the swapfile configured with
o Fixed size swapfile
o Swapfile is approx. three times the amount of RAM on the system

Windows XP Annoyances, Chap. 5 p.216, OReilly .

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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

Part 2
If you increase the allowable size of the pagefile.sys the pagefile.sys may itself be
defragmented (leading to a system performance deterioration). Disk Defragmenter is not
capable of defragmenting the swapfile itself (however Nortons Speed Disk is capable of
doing this).
If you have more than 256 MB of RAM then you could disable virtual memory
temporarily (click No paging file and press Set in the Virtual Memory window). Restart
Windows, run Disk Defragmenter. When this completes go back to the re-enable a
suitable constant size paging file.

Defragmentation of the hard-disk

Frequent use of a hard-drive can cause fragmentation of files (i.e. The files are all broken
up and saved as pieces all over the hard-disk, wherever space is available). Here we see
four files all saved consecutively on the hard disk. Later File 3 is deleted. A new file, File
5, is created and then saved by the OS in two place the space vacated by File 3 and after
File 4. Thus File 5 has become fragmented.
File 1
File 1
File 1

File 2

File 3

File 2
File 2

File 4
File 4

File 5

File 4

File 5

Windows comes with a utility called Disk Defragmenter (dfrg.mcs) which re-arranges
the files on the hard disk to make them contiguous (not broken into pieces). You can
locate the program from Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk
Defragmenter or select a drive letter in Windows Explorer and right-click and from the
pop-up menu select Properties| Tools | Defragmentation. Dont work on the PC while its
defragmenting.
Sometimes Disk Defragmenter does so much and then stops. Typically this is solved by:

Stopping all unnecessary programs and background processes which may write to
the hard-disk during a defrag (causing defrag to start all over again).

Additionally you can select a drive letter in Windows Explorer and right-click and
from the pop-up menu select Properties| Tools | General and uncheck the Allow
indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching.

Exercise:
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Operating Systems Lab Exercises:

WINDOWS 2000/XP

Task Manager

After reading the Virtual memory section we will defragment one of your PCs disk
drives.

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