The IT Handbook

← All cheat sheets

Windows and Linux

System health and processes

Start here when a computer is slow or acting strangely. Click any command to copy it.

TaskWindowsLinux
OS and version or and
Last boot and uptime
Hardware summary in PowerShell, and
Who is signed in and and
List running processes or
Live resource viewTask Manager, or or
Memory use, then compare the free and total memory fields
Biggest CPU usersSort Task Manager by CPU, which sorts by CPU, or press inside it
Stop a hung program first, then if it ignores that, or

Try a plain kill before kill -9 on Linux. Kill -9 cannot be caught, so the program gets no chance to save its work or clean up.