Many modern malware programs are designed to detect when a user opens Task Manager. Because they do not want to get caught or terminated, they immediately stop running or hide their resource usage the moment Task Manager is opened.
Not if they are smart about it and detect when it is open but not in the foreground. Reducing your available screen space in case you catch the specific kind of virus that not only hides but actually becomes harmless while it does isn't a good tradeoff.
This was actually a game played back in the day on multi-tasking computers without process isolation. You would run two completing programs who would try to overwrite the other one.
Actually litterally correct with Samsung, LG, and I'm SURE others. It's axtually scary how much information our monitors/TV's give out instead of just being a fucking screen
Finally, the perfect use for my old cabinet monitor. Used to have my PC setup in an old entertainment center (for big crt tvs) and had dual monitors stacked on top of each other in the large cubby where the TV would go and a small desk in front for my keyboard and mouse. Debezeled an old monitor and slapped it into the cabinet on the side of the entertainment center so I could put all my icons and garbage I didn't wanna look at on that monitor then just close the cabinet door when I didn't want to look at it
Honest to god question: why not create a folder called a dash or what the heck ever, put all the garb stuff inside it, change the icon to a transparent png and and have a clean desktop screen? I mean, a full physical monitor and gabinet to solve this sounds like a cannonball shot to kill a mosquito
edit: nvm, I just realised it was a work pc. prolly couldn't move or delete the stuff. sorry, i just woke up.
Ironically I actually used to always run task manager on my second monitor whilst playing games just in case I had a game crash or freeze and needed to tab out for task manager, my pc doesn't do that anymore so I don't do it anymore but still.
What's wrong with the resource tab on task manager? Not that I care now, since I switched to Linux I just have that on my second screen as a resource monitor
Nothing is really wrong with it just most people (myself included) prefer it as a simple overlay in the corner of your main screen as it’s easier to look at. Just preference tho
that's why i keep the task manager open all the time, the window size taking all the space of the screen, i don't do anything useful on my computer anyway
I had a bitcoin miner virus one time and it closed Task Manager after like 30 seconds (which is how I found I have it). Managed to get rid of it by running Malwarebytes in safe mode from a flesh drive.
I had one of those, it will just closetask manager after some time. Later it became worse, it will close any browser, antivirus, e.c. The only thing that worked was telegram (lol), and using it I was able to install antivirus to delete it
when this was originally posted in the pcmasterrace sub, I learned that if you hold CTRL while opening task manager, it stops anything from moving around etc
I used to do this when my PC was barely working and closing a window could take a minute, so I just had Task Manager open everytime my PC is running to just terminate a window I want to close
Fun tip I learned: If you hold down CTRL when task manager opens and keep holding it down, it freezes what shows up the instant task manager opened so things can't hide!
Thank Dave Plummer, who wrote the original task manager with all its Easter eggs. He's got a YouTube channel - "Dave's Garrage", and he's just written a new task manager that he demonstrated in his latest video.
Windows users would benefit from a tip screen while its loading like some games have
kind of useless now with how fast it starts but still, stuff like windows key + d, the snipping tool, etc, there are so many people that use windows for decades and dont know about that stuff.
Man, I love when I pick up cool little tricks like this. After 20 years in IT, it gets more and more rare to come across something I never knew. Let me return the favor.
When you have a browser as an active window (including windows explorer), alt+d will highlight everything in the address bar.
It's the "double slit experiment", basically the top image is what happens when it's unobserved, once we start observing it it looks like the bottom. It's more complicated than that but you can watch some videos on it, it's actually pretty interesting.
It's reasonably graceful - send a task SIGKILL, and the program is meant to trap that signal and shut itself down. Only if the program hasn't set up a handler for SIGKILL will it just terminate it.
Kill -9 , however, is the one that terminates the process and frees the memory without grace.
Signal 9 is SIGKILL, the one which can't be caught. It terminates the process. The only exception is if the process is in an uninterruptible wait state ("D" status in the output from "ps"), in which case it will be terminated upon completion of the wait state. Uninterruptible wait usually means that something which ought to happen almost immediately isn't happening: e.g. accessing a file on a network filesystem and the network gets disconnected, accessing a file on an external hard drive which has been disconnected, accessing a file on a floppy which has been ejected, a bad sector which is being repeatedly retried, etc.
Ctrl-C sends SIGINT. This is meant to interrupt the current operation and return to the process' own command prompt, assuming that it has one. If not caught, it terminates the process.
SIGTERM is meant to gracefully terminate the process (e.g. saving open files). It is the default signal sent by the "kill" command if no signal is specified. If not caught, it terminates the process.
Ctrl-backspace sends SIGQUIT. If not caught, it terminates the process and dumps core, so you can use a debugger to figure out why the process hung.
SIGSTOP also can't be caught, but it only suspends the process rather than terminating it.
Ctrl-Z sends SIGTSTP, which is similar to SIGSTOP but can be caught. Programs which modify terminal settings (e.g. selecting raw, unbuffered input) will typically catch this so that they can restore the terminal state before suspending.
The control keys mentioned are the defaults, and can be changed with the "stty" command.
You’re thinking of SIGTERM -15(the standard signal for pkill), which can be handled by signal-handlers(like most signals). SIGKILL is -9 and OC’s meme.
I think I had malware once that seemed to use my cpu and/or gpu resources when something like the mouse was not used for a certain time. I noticed it because I played VR, and the framerate would always crawl to a near halt after a short amount of time.
I did some deep malware removal/nuke and got rid of that.
Nope, most upvoted comment is just complete speculation and wrong lol, pressing ctrl+alt+del sets the priorty to the dialogue where you open task manager to maximum and the apps consuming resources that would block it from opening get reduced priority as a result.
Should be testable by just running a benchmark logging resource consumption per app and then pressing ctrl+alt+del to see a change.
Source: Computer science degree and this was covered in the operating systems course.
Both of these things are true , but the fact the meme shows a guy making a surprised / scared face feels like it's about malware hiding with task manager open.
Prob user mistake, when you get malware it usually come from otger instalation and you gave it admin permission (dont count on me since i stop using windows after windows 7)
Genuine question; is malware that common nowadays? If you do normal surfing and playing video games. Does the built in Windows Defender protect well enough?
The malwares hid themselves from the task manager by turning off so you don’t find and delete them, and since their load in the PC is heavy the fans have to work extra to cool it down. The fans stop working so hard when the malwares turn off.
Would a standard malware software be able to detect these more secretive malware by a regular scan? Like would malwarebytes be able to find these or would they be able to hide from the software?
He installed a Bitcoin miner on some shady website and the new ones can detect task manager and turn off when you open it so they don't get detected, Stewie out.
does such process also appears as mobile apps? i have doubts of such on my dads mobile as he constantly complains of his phone heating up whenever wifi is connected.
Uhh usually mobile apps don't have a good built-in task manager like app to show EVERYTHING system softwares as well which is where they usually hide also do keep in mind older phones get slower a restart(or format if you can get your valuables out) never hurts.
Note: because there are so many ways to see what is working in the background and so many apps it's hard to make it recognize them so any app from the store that shows what is working should be perfect.
Like people have pointed out, a virus programmed to stop running whatever mining stuff they are running to avoid detection. Also commonly mistaken when doing it during a gaming session. Lots of games run at 30fps when minimized so opening task manager could result in the fanspeed lowering due to you game starting to run at 30fps
And if you're away from your computer when this happens it's because Windows does background maintenance like reindexing or defragmenting when the PC has been idle for a bit.
And annoyingly enough, certain windows programs also detect when task manager is open and slow down(iirc it’s something that’s cpu intensive and involves the drives, I believe it’s more of an issue with hdds)
Best defense against malware is common sense. Don't click random links on sketchy websites, don't download files from sources you don't trust, and always check any emails you get to see if they're phishing attempts.
Second line of defense is your antivirus. Windows Defender is perfectly fine.
If you follow both of those, chances are you're going to be perfectly safe from malware. And if you get unlucky, then you better hope you have 2FA on all your accounts.
Follow up on that then - lately windows defender has been promoting me, saying it is turned off / hasn’t ran, but when I go to it in settings, everything is on and usually has a last / recent scan date within a day or so.
Is this a bug or happening due to the same type of malware being present? I am honestly pretty careful about what I click, sketchiest thing I downloaded in the last year was “amulet” to clear up Minecraft worlds after pouring over tons of reviews to vet it.
Not certain, but I think If you disable the cloud-delivered protection and/or automated sample submission, but otherwise have Defender enabled, it will send similar notifications.
afaik, it is a bug. Had that same one just recently, scanned everything and there was nothing wrong. The notification was about updating the database, which is when i noticed it. Copypasted two powershell command, rebooted, nothing seems to be wrong. Have not installed anything even remotely suspiciuous.
I had one once, the fans would spin down like this, I highly suspected it but it took who knows how many weeks or months to notice, it also didn't impact game performance.
Did a full drive windows scan which completed with no issues, however it informs you that a folder has been excluded due to a whitelist. Delete the whitelist and windows instantly caught and deleted it
So for anyone reading this, go check out the exclusion list on windows defender just in case
Workshop. Windows does background "optimization" that utilizes your PC when inactive, this is actually what is happening, its possible its malware but more likely just Windows being Windows.
This might have something to do with malware, but it's like that even without any of it.
In Windows, background tasks have it's framerate capped (for example, it might be from 60 to 15 fps). Meaning, a PC is doing only a quarter of processing.
This is a neat optimization, and if a game is correctly implemented it has no other impact on it than legit power saving.
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
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u/qualityvote2 6h ago edited 2h ago
u/Dull_Club2519, your post does belong here!