I often monitor background processes while my computer is running.

So what do these three graphs indicate?

 

Umm, x-axis is time. Y-axis is as labelled at top of each graph. CPU usage and physical memory usage.

 

The CPU Usage History has two frames. What does each of them indicate?

 

two cores

 

Some CPUs have more than one processing unit (core) on each chip. Windows is programmed to use these multiple cores. The individual processing per cent of each core is shown on its own graph. If your chip had four cores, there would be four graphs.

 

I have a WinXP computer with a Pentium CPU. When I got it, I didn't know there was such a thing as Pentium Dual-Core (in fact l didn't until I looked it up just now), so I was quite surprised when I saw two graphs in the Task Manager after I understood what it meant.

 

Is it Win XP? If so, mine looks different. I get a graphic showing the amount of data writen on the HDD for lack of RAM. Sorry but I fail to know the English equivalents.

That graphic showed a very high and continuous level of writing to disk totally unjustified for most of my software until I confirmed that bloody AVG was the culprit. Adding to the frequent requests to restart the PC up to three times a day, I throwed it overboard and welcomed Avast.

Now, that graphic is a very flat one near the bottom and my disk works MUCH less.

 

Is it Win XP? If so, mine looks different. I get a graphic showing the amount of data writen on the HDD for lack of RAM. Sorry but I fail to know the English equivalents.

That graphic showed a very high and continuous level of writing to disk totally unjustified for most of my software until I confirmed that bloody AVG was the culprit. Adding to the frequent requests to restart the PC up to three times a day, I throwed it overboard and welcomed Avast.

Now, that graphic is a very flat one near the bottom and my disk works MUCH less.

The screenshot is of either Vista or Win7 (and l believe the TS uses the latter).

Regarding AV software, I've been using Avast for a few years now. I never used AVG because I saw too many negative reviews of it, but it seems popular too.