Maybe you just want to find out who's using all your RAM? Click the Working Set column header (if you don't see it, click View > Select Columns > Process Memory, and check Working Set Size).

Found something? Then right-click it, select Search Online, and Process Explorer will open a browser window with the Google search results for that process, a very quick way to identify it. If you're looking for malware, or just programs that you might be running unnecessarily, then scan down the list and look for process names you don't recognise. Launch the program (it's portable, so no installation required) and you'll immediately see a lengthy list of everything running on your PC, right now. Windows Task Manager will give you a basic look at this information, but for the real in-depth detail you need a specialist utility like Process Explorer.

Whatever the issue you're trying to solve, the first step is always to take a closer look at what's running on your system, and the resources they're consuming. Every PC has problems from time to time: an application is misbehaving, something's locked up, the entire system seems very slow, maybe you think you've been infected by a virus.

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