Windows Troubleshooting: The Case of the Missing Task Manager Tabs

by AJ George 

Here's a potentially scary situation: an application has crashed and is frozen on your screen. It looks like you are going to have to end the process. Most Windows users know that one way to end a process is to press [Ctrl] [Alt] [Del] on the keyboard to open the Windows Task Manager. On the Processes tab, select the crashed application and click the End Process button.

 

When an application recently crashed on my computer, I followed these very steps. However, to my horror, my Task Manager was missing its usual tabs and looked similar to the image below (the crashed application isn't shown of course, to protect the innocent):

Depending on your version of Windows, there could be a half-dozen tabs including Applications, Processes, Services, and Performance. I had no idea why my tabs were missing, but I tried to right-click the crashed application and end the task, but that wasn't working. If I could have accessed the Processes tab, I could have used it to quickly end the process.

While stressful, the fix was easy. All that I had to do was double-click the space to the left of the End Taskbutton and my tabs appeared. I also found that double-clicking the space again returned me to a tab-less view.  

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AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations.