Upgrading & Fixing Laptops DUMmIES

Examples include utilities such as antivirus programs, instant message man-

agers, calendars, and system monitors. And — this is important — some

Windows XP components themselves run in the background; for that reason

you need to understand what is running, its purpose, and whether it can be

safely removed or disabled.

Here’s how to find out what is running in the background:

1. Go to the Task Manager. You can do so in several ways:
   
   
   • Bring the cursor down to the taskbar (usually on the bottom and
     sometimes on the side of the Windows screen, even when a fore-
     ground application is running) and right-click. From the submenu,
     select Task Manager.
   
   
   • Press the Ctrl+Alt+Del key combination. This directly opens the
     Task Manager.
   
   
   
   


2. Click the Processes tab.

Here you see a list of programs running in the foreground. Most of them

should be recognizable. For example, as I am writing this section on my

laptop, I’ve got Microsoft Word running, and in the background is

Microsoft Office OneNote, a productivity utility. You can see the Task

Manager display in Figure 18-2.

Figure 18-2:
Microsoft
Windows
Task
Manager
shows
applications
currently
running on a
laptop. A
machine
connected
to the
Internet
usually has
a number of
additional
utilities
running.

Chapter 18: Adding or Removing Software, for Better or for Worse 281