Task Manager Extreme

December 22, 2004

If Task Manager Extension is Task Manager on steroids, then Mark Russinovich's Process Explorer is Task Manager in a ripped anabolic fury, fueled by high octane rage. In other words, it's extreme:

screenshot of process explorer

Although it can be a little overwhelming-- I think it just kicked sand in my face-- it does have some features that I prefer over Task Manager Extension, namely:

  • A menu item to enable/disable replacing Task Manager
  • Drag and drop spy icon button to visually identify windows and their corresponding processes
  • Real-time, color-coded highlighting of changes
  • Native support of .NET processes
  • Shows TCP/IP connections for a given process
  • Lists all strings found in a given process

.. among many, many other things. And of course it duplicates all the functionality of Task Manager Extension. If you've outgrown Task Manager completely, this is definitely the tool for you.

Posted by Jeff Atwood
10 Comments

Definitely a SWEET tool, and I second Darrell's thoughts. Another Great tool is "WhoLockMe" - Handy when you can't figure out why a file is locked:

http://www.dr-hoiby.com/WhoLockMe/index.php

(Just a happy user - not a shill)

Brian Hampson on December 22, 2004 1:57 AM

Process Explorer can tell you who has a file locked.

1) Create a new Word doc called "LockedDoc.doc" on your desktop and open it in Word.

2) Try to delete the document. Should fail.

3) In Process explorer, choose Find Handle (CTRL+F, or the little binoculars icon)

4) Enter "lockeddoc" and press ENTER

5) winword.exe shows up, double-click on it. This will highlight the process and handle.

You can theoretically force the handle closed by using the Handle, Close Handle menu at this point, but Word is awfully feisty..

Jeff Atwood on December 22, 2004 2:45 AM

Everything on sysinternals' site is worth it's KB in gold!

Darrell on December 22, 2004 9:13 AM

so true..

Jeff Atwood on December 22, 2004 12:25 PM

For the life of me I cannot find out where the hightlight color codes are in any help files. Does any body know what they are.

wrangler on December 2, 2005 3:11 AM

@Wrangler - You can change the colour of the highlighted text by going to Options - Configure Highlighting.

I've been using Process Explorer for nearly as long as I can remember! It's one of those truly great applications.

Timbo on January 8, 2006 8:30 AM

I've also been using it a couple years, still use task manager for most things, but sometimes you need more information for debugging and optimizing and process explorer is great for that. Although on one or two occasions (primarily when monitoring a process which then ends) the app sucks up 99% cpu and eventually I have to use task manager to kill it. Not sure why this happens and it has only happened a couple times so no real issue.

Richard Wickens on January 11, 2006 5:51 AM

Updated url for process explorer

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processexplorer.mspx

John on November 30, 2007 8:14 AM

its nice...

sam on September 10, 2008 3:03 AM

. Although on one or two occasions (primarily when monitoring a process which then ends) the app sucks up 99% cpu and eventually I have to use task manager to kill it. http://etalaze.net

Dianabol Steroids on July 18, 2010 4:12 AM

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