Process Explorer is a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

task manager In operating systems, a task manager is a system monitor program used to provide information about the processes and applications running on a computer, as well as the general status of the computer. Some implementations can also be used t ...

and

system monitor A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. Monitoring can tra ...

for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

created by

SysInternals Windows Sysinternals is a website that offers technical resources and utilities to manage, diagnose, troubleshoot, and monitor a Microsoft Windows environment. Originally, the Sysinternals website (formerly known as ntinternals) was created in 19 ...

, which has been acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and re-branded as Windows Sysinternals. It provides the functionality of

Windows Task Manager Task Manager, previously known as Windows Task Manager, is a task manager, system monitor, and startup manager included with Microsoft Windows systems. It provides information about computer performance and running software, including names of ...

along with a rich set of features for collecting information about

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management * Business process, activities that produce a specific s ...

es running on the user's system. It can be used as the first step in debugging software or system problems. Process Explorer can be used to track down problems. For example, it provides a means to list or search for named resources that are held by a process or all processes. This can be used to track down what is holding a file open and preventing its use by another program. As another example, it can show the command lines used to start a program, allowing otherwise identical processes to be distinguished. Like Task Manager, it can show a process that is maxing out the

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

, but unlike Task Manager it can show which thread (with the callstack) is using the CPU – information that is not even available under a debugger.

History

Process Explorer began in the early Sysinternals days as two separate utilities, HandleEx and DLLView, which were merged in 2001. Until 2008, Process Explorer worked on

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a line of discontinued Microsoft Windows operating systems released from 1995 to 2000 and supported until 2006, which were based on the kernel introduced in Windows 95 and modified in succeeding version ...

, Windows NT 4.0 and

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

. Versions of Process Explorer up to 12.04 work on Windows 2000; versions 14.0 and higher do not require (which is only available since Windows XP/

2003 2003 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Fresh water, Freshwater. In 2003, a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition 2003 invasion of Iraq, invaded Iraq, starting the Iraq War. Demographic ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

is supported up to version 16.05,

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

until version 16.42, Windows 8.1 and Server 2012 until 17.05. The current version runs on

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

and upwards. The

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

software "Process Hacker" has been developed with the aim to replicate its functionality.

Features

* Hierarchical view of processes * Ability to display an icon and company name next to each process * Live CPU activity graph in the task bar * Ability to suspend selected process * Ability to raise the window attached to a process, thus "unhiding" it * Complete process tree can be killed * Interactively alter a service process's access security * Interactively set the priority of a process * Disambiguates service executables which perform multiple service functions. For example, when the pointer is placed over a , it will tell if it is the one performing automatic updates/secondary logon/etc., or the one providing

RPC RPC may refer to: Science and technology * Rational polynomial coefficient * Reactive Plastic Curtain, a carbon-dioxide-absorbing device used in some rebreather breathing sets * Regional Playback Control, a regional lockout technology for DVDs ...

, or the one performing terminal services, and so on * There is an option (in a process's context menu) to verify a process in VirusTotal * There is an option to display DLLs loaded by process (View → Lower Pane View → DLLs); an option Show Lower Pane has to be switched on * There is an option to display processes'

handles A handle is a part of, or an attachment to, an object that allows it to be grasped and manipulated by hand. The design of each type of handle involves substantial ergonomic issues, even where these are dealt with intuitively or by following t ...

which includes named mutants, events, sockets, files, registry keys etc. (View → Lower Pane View → Handles); an option Show Lower Pane has to be switched on * In properties of a process a user can view the process's threads and threads'

stack trace In computing, a stack trace (also called stack backtrace or stack traceback) is a report of the active stack frames at a certain point in time during the execution of a program. When a program is run, memory is often dynamically allocated in tw ...

s * There is a command to create a process dump (mini or full) (Process → Create Dump) * There is a Find command which allows for searching a handle or DLL which can be used to identify the process(es) holding a file lock * There is an option (in handle context menu) to close a selected handle * Version 15 added GPU monitoring

References

External links

Process Explorer Official Webpage
Microsoft Retrieved on December 29, 2008

February 9, 2008

February 10, 2008
Process Explorer Guide for Newbies
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100318020447/http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=10998 , date=2010-03-18 February 27, 2009
Sysinternals Suite at Microsoft Technet
Updated continuously as of August 2009 Utilities for Windows 2001 software Microsoft software

History

Features

See also

References

External links