The task manager is a Windows program that shows all of the running programs on your system. Why would you need something like this? Well, imagine if a program hangs and you can't do anything about it: if you bring up the task manager you can end the program; but, how do you distinguish which programs are safe to end?

Obviously, you don't want to go around and ending random processes, because you may end up doing damage to your Windows operating system. Also, you may not know which program is running: some viruses and spyware tends to hide themselves with names similar to trusted processes.

ProcessLibrary is the most comprehensive list of processes that may be running on your system. Here you can search for a process executable or DLL and see if it is safe or not, and what you may need to do to remove the process from your system.

If you really need to end a process, in the Windows Task Manager right-click on the process you want to end and click "end process" or "end process tree."

Which process manager do you use, and how do you determine which processes are safe to end?

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