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Written by Administrator
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Page 3 of 3 Killing the Bad Guys When you right-click a process in the list of processes, you see the End Process and End Process Tree commands. Choosing the first one terminates the process and the second – the process itself, together with all of its descendants. You get a warning that terminating a process that way might cause system instability but if your are killing a program that is not responding anyway, you might actually gain some system stability (or at least processor time). Actually, killing a process through the Windows Task Manager is worth only if the program has hung and you need to free resources. Browsing through the processes in Windows Task Manager might also give you a clue if you have viruses, spyware, adware and other types of malware on your computer. If you notice a strange process in the list of processes, check it to see which program it belongs to and if it is malware, take the appropriate measures (i.e. launch your antivirus or spyware program). However, have in mind that the fact that you don't see any suspicious processes in the list of processes does not mean that your computer is clean because most of the advanced malicious programs are written in a way that allows them to remain hidden and they will hardly show themselves in the processes list. Most often malicious code is hidden behind perfectly legitimate processes or uses the same name (the example with svchost.exe) as a Windows service or a popular program and it is not likely that you will get an alert by seeing it in the processes list of Windows Task Manager. But even if the malicious program shows in the list, stopping the process will not remove it from your computer. You need to take additional measures to clean it completely. Still, occasionally having a look at what processes are running at your computer is a good habit to pick!
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