The Processes table provides information on all processes (or programs) currently running on the system.

How to end a process

Members of the Spotlight Diagnostic Administrators group can use the Processes page to end any processes currently running on a local machine or remote machines. To do this:

  1. Right-click a process in the grid to display its shortcut menu.
  2. Choose the End Process option (if enabled) from the menu.

The columns of the grid are:

% CPU

The percentage of CPU time that the program is currently consuming. This is an instantaneous result.

% Kernel

The percentage of CPU time that the program is currently consuming in privileged mode. (Privileged mode is designed for operating system components and allows direct access to hardware and all memory).

% User

The percentage of CPU time that the program is currently consuming in user mode. (User mode is a restricted processing mode designed for applications, environment subsystems, and integral subsystems).

Address Space (MB)

The current size of the total address space of the process.

Elapsed Time

How long it has been since the program was started.

Handles

The overall number of resources that the program currently has open. A handle is a value used to uniquely identify a resource so that a program can access it.

IO/sec

The number of I/O accesses (such as hard disk reads and writes and memory reads and writes) being performed by the process.

IO Data MB/sec

The rate at which the process is reading and writing megabytes in all its I/O operations.

IO Other/sec

The rate at which the process is issuing I/O operations that do not involve data (control operations, for example).

IO Other MB/Sec

The rate at which the process is issuing megabytes to I/O operations that do not involve data (control operations, for example).

IO Read MB/Sec

The rate at which the process is reading megabytes from I/O operations.

IO Reads/Sec

The number of I/O reads (such as hard disk reads and memory reads) being performed by the process.

IO Write MB/Sec

The rate at which the process is writing megabytes to I/O operations.

IO Writes/Sec

The number of I/O writes (such as hard disk writes and memory writes) being performed by the process.

Mem Usage (MB)

The current size of the working set of the process.

Page Faults/Sec

An instantaneous view of how many page faults are occurring for the program.

Page File MB

The current number of megabytes that this process has used in the paging file(s).

Page File MB Peak

The maximum number of megabytes that this process has used in the paging file(s).

Peak Address Space (MB)

The peak size of the total address space of the process since it was started.

Peak Mem Usage (MB)

The peak size of the working set of the process since it was started.

PID

The Process ID. This is individual for all currently running processes across the system. This can be used as a parameter in system programs, such as the TASKKILL.EXE command on Windows systems.

Pool Nonpaged MB

The number of megabytes of memory currently used by the server that cannot be paged out.

Pool Paged MB

The number of megabytes of memory currently used by the server that can be paged out.

Priority

The priority of the program. Program priorities range from 1 to 31, and depend on what the program is currently running. Programs started in “Real Time” mode run with a priority of 16 to 31, whereas programs with “High”, “Normal” or “Low” settings run in a priority range of 1 to 15.

Process

The image name of the application itself. This can be used as a parameter in system programs, such as the TASKKILL.EXE command on Windows systems.

Services

The services (if any) associated with the current process permitted to run the current process.

Session ID

The session ID for the process, generated by the operating system.

Threads

The number of active threads in the program. A thread is a program execution unit.

User

Shows the owner of the process on a Windows Server machine (for example, Windows Server).

VM Size (MB)

The current memory allocated to this process that cannot be shared with other processes.