What is the difference between Programs, Processes, Threads and Windows?Firstly, how does Windows run a program?For
instance, what does Windows do when you double click Internet Explorer
icon?
When
you double click Internet Explorer icon, Windows creates a process for
Internet Explorer, a process is simply a running program, each process
requires some System resources (CPU usage, Memory usage …). Each process
creates one or more threads, a thread can be considered as sub-process.
And finally each thread can have one or more associated top-level
windows (In our example, Internet Explorer window is the top level
window that you can see). When you double click Internet explorer icon
again new process is created which doesn’t often have a relation
with the first one except that they are similar instances.
In
EndTask, you can either terminate all the processes of Internet Explorer at
once, or terminate a specified process.
Terminating a specified process?You
can either select a window in windows’ list box created by the specified
process and terminate it, or you can select Internet Explorer item from
Programs’ list box and click Programs’ details
button, and then select the process that you want from process’s list and
click ‘Terminate’ button.
Terminating a program completely?
EndTask
displays one item only for each program in Programs’ list box in
Task Manager. That means - in our previous example - there exists only one
item for Internet Explorer, and beside it, the number of processes
of Internet Explorer (which is 2), by selecting Internet Explorer item
from the list and clicking ‘Terminate’ button, all the processes of Internet
Explorer will be terminated, and Internet Explorer will be completely terminated.
|