Windows 8 brought a brand new task manager with tons of new features, but it can be a little bit confusing if you were accustomed to the old way of doing things. Here are a few ways to customize the interface.
The task manager was redesigned to be easier to use, but if you’re more of a power user, you probably miss the more detailed interface of the old days. Weblog Tweaking with Vishal shares a few tips on how to tweak the new Task Manager to your liking:
Disable Process Grouping: First, you’ll notice that on the “Process” tab, the Task Manager groups processes into different categories: Apps, Background Processes, and Windows Processes. If you’d rather ungroup these processes, just head to the View menu and uncheck Group by Type. Now you can list them alphabetically, by CPU usage, memory usage, and so on.
Show Process Names: By default, the Process tab shows the name of the application (like “Adobe Photoshop CS”) rather than the process name (like “photoshop.exe”). You can head to the Details tab to view process names, but you can also create a column for them in the regular Task Manager. Just right-click on one of the column headers at the top and check the “Process Name” item. You can also add columns for the process ID, the app publisher, and more.
Bring Back the Old Task Manager Altogether: If you still prefer the Windows 7 Task Manager—even after tweaking the above—you can bring back the original Windows 7 Task Manager with a simple registry tweak. Download the registry file here and enable it to get it back. You lose a little Windows 8 functionality, but the whole thing should be a bit more familiar and comfortable.
[Tip] Tweak and Customize Windows 8 Task Manager Functionality | Tweaking With Vishal
