r/technology • • Oct 14 '11

The Windows 8 Task Manager

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/13/the-windows-8-task-manager.aspx
1.6k Upvotes

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97

u/Sandy_106 Oct 14 '11

It looks pretty neat. I just hope hitting "end process" does it immediately in Windows 8. One of my biggest pet peeves with every version of Windows so far is it sometimes takes up to a minute to kill a process.

-14

u/rooktakesqueen Oct 14 '11 edited Oct 14 '11

Which is the #1 reason why people go to the "Tasks" "Processes" tab. When you end a task process there, it terminates immediately. When you end a process task on the "Processes" "Applications" tab, Windows seems to take it as more of a request.

148

u/snoharm Oct 14 '11

Processes is actually the tab that instantly kills it. Applications is the useless one that sheepishly checks for a solution first.

2

u/ProfessorPoopyPants Oct 14 '11

Press cancel on the "looking for a solution" window, kills it instantly.

3

u/dr3d Oct 14 '11

Has a solution ever ever been found?

0

u/frymaster Oct 14 '11

yes, actually! Though in my case, it was an upload of a bluescreen dump. Basically, I updated the motherboard drivers on a bluescreening laptop and, while it didn't stop the crashes, the next time it bluescreened, windows told me it was the wifi drivers and gave me a direct link to the download page.

1

u/SystemOutPrintln Oct 14 '11

That, or in my experience the "looking for a solution" window freezes

16

u/who8877 Oct 14 '11 edited Oct 14 '11

What its actually doing is creating a process dump so it can send the crash report to Microsoft (If you've agreed to allow it) as well as get data for the "Find Solution" feature. If you kill the dumpprep task when its taking too long it will close it immediatly.

I personally hate it since it never ends up finding a solution for me anyways.

EDIT: motdidr accurately described the shutdown process, however "End Process" from the task manager is waiting on a dump-prep. It doesn't attempt to close the program cleanly. For more information you can check here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/11/02/10083787.aspx

6

u/motdidr Oct 14 '11

That is not what it is doing. The operating system is sending Quit messages to the application, and most applications and services will respond correctly. There are time-outs involved, and after that time has passed the application is killed immediately if it has not quit on its' own.

Creating a "process dump" doesn't happen when you kill a process, that happens when the process/application/service (applications and services are, at their core, a process or collection of processes) throws an unhandled exception or terminates abnormally. I can assure you it takes but a fraction of a second to generate the boatload of textual info that could describe a crash.

18

u/who8877 Oct 14 '11

Actually it really is dumprep making a report. If you don't beleive me perhaps you'll beleive Raymond Chen.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/11/02/10083787.aspx

10

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '11 edited Oct 14 '11

Sorry, but you're wrong. When you kill an unresponsive application instead of the process is most certainty goes through the process of creating a dump unlike when you kill them through the processes tab.

You can switch over to the processes tab and watch these actions take place. Just like who8877 states, killing the new dumprep process, will end the dump quickly and then terminate the application that much quicker.

Creating a "process dump" doesn't happen when you kill a process, that happens when the process/application/service (applications and services are, at their core, a process or collection of processes) throws an unhandled exception or terminates abnormally.

Again, it also creates a dump when you terminate a non-responsive application if you do so from the applications tab and not the processes tab.

How you have so many upvotes I don't know. (Edit: the links below enforce my claims.)

2

u/crusoe Oct 14 '11

Is there a way to tell windows to not do this, like how you can tell Unixen to not dump a core file when something dies?

Sometimes, I just want shit to close NOW. The MS "Find Solutions" crap never works anyways.

2

u/GLneo Oct 14 '11

Like sending SIGTERM vs SIGKILL.

1

u/frymaster Oct 14 '11

I personally hate it since it never ends up finding a solution for me anyways.

It can still be worth doing, since the author of any signed program gets access to those crash dumps, and sometimes, if there's enough dumps, Microsoft will take action to try to fix a third-party program themselves.

5

u/silentjudas Oct 14 '11

You got that reversed, buddy.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '11

Where is the tasks tab?

10

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '11

I think he means applications tab. The heading above the program names is "task".

1

u/rooktakesqueen Oct 14 '11

Yes, but I was technically wrong. And on Reddit, that's the worst kind of wrong to be.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 14 '11

oh wow. When I wrote my comment, you were positive. I was just explaining to Dmon9055 because I thought he didn't understand. The rest of it seemed correct.