We’ll try and note anything that is specifically for a particular version. Note: while most of the screenshots in this series will be from Windows 8.1, almost everything can be equally applied to Windows 7 as well. When do you use Performance Monitor, or Resource Monitor… or switch to the SysInternals tools instead? These are the things you need to know to use Windows like a pro. There’s so much going on under the hood that you just can’t see by pulling out Task Manager. To become a pro at administering Windows, you need to know about all of the tools available to you, how they work, and how to use them. It’s more than clearing out caches and making sure there aren’t any viruses. Windows administration is more than just creating user accounts or running defrag once in a while.

Monitoring Your PC with Resource Monitor and Task Manager.Learning to Use the Registry Editor Like a Pro.Understanding Hard Drive Partitioning with Disk Management.Using Event Viewer to Troubleshoot Problems.Using Task Scheduler to Run Processes Later.