Updated: July 31, 2024
There I was, minding my own business, not doing anything harmful to the environment when a need arose for me to invoke the Windows Task Manager on a Windows 10 box. I did, and I immediately noticed something different. Instead of showing thumbnails of graphs of different resources (network, disk, CPU, etc) in the sidebar on the left, the Task Manager was only showing these blobs of color.
On its own, this wouldn't be a problem if this is how my box was configured. But it wasn't. The disappearance of the thumbnail graphs alarmed me. Because if you don't introduce any changes to the system, the system shouldn't change. Basic physics. And yet, this happened. The only thing that could explain it, barely, is that the machine had received some (unfortunate) Windows Updates earlier in the month. My job was to figure out how to restore the little graphs. Follow me.
Solution
The problem is not great or cardinal in any way. But it is infuriating. As it happens, you can interact with the Windows Task Manager in various ways. You can also right-click in its interface, and make changes. Specifically, you can decide how to display the information shown in the sidebar.
Right-click > Show graphs, job done. The first options (Summary view) will show/hide the big graphs in the main pane. I am not quite sure why this would be a feature, but hey. Anyway, this is all it takes to restore the graphs (or remove them, if you wish so).
Conclusion
Task Manager may not be as useful as say Process Explorer, but it does have its uses. The biggest "crime" is that it's not very intuitive, and it does not invite people to try its different options. There are some neat tricks available, and we can discuss them in a separate article. Here, the issue I faced was trivial if one know how to interface with the program; extremely annoying if one does not. And then, there's the big question, why did the change happen to begin with?
I do test Windows Updates thoroughly before applying them in "production" so to speak, which makes the scenario even more bizarre. The control box did not experience any change, but this one did. I can only imagine some weird bit or registry key got reset for some reason (for the LULZ). Then, since Task Manager is not intuitive, you could end up spinning in circles trying to figure out how to fix the issue. Hopefully, this little tutorial will put your OCD demons to rest. Pointless, like most modern tech stuff. See you around.
Cheers.