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This Windows Process Manager is Free and Open Source
Windows makes it relatively easy to terminate a program or process which is misbehaving. Just bring up Task Manager and kill it. However, there's much more going on inside your operating system than Task Manager would have you believe. For a truly detailed view, you need a better process manager, and one excellent such program is Process Hacker.
With Process Hacker you can see what's running on your PC, how much resources everything is taking, and much more besides. It's a great way to take a low-level peek into the inner workings of Windows.
Process Hacker requires Windows XP or above, and is less than 1 MB to download. And not only is it free, you can also download the full source code (some 236,000 lines of C) if you really want to get your hands dirty!
Check out http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/ for more details.
My thanks to user "wj32" (the author of Process Hacker) for telling me about this program. If you have a hot find that you want to tell people about, tell me and I'll do the rest. Just see http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/submit-product-review.htm.
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Comments
I guess I'm kinda dumb but I'm unable to find the exe. file in order to run this program. Any suggestions?
The exe file is placed in a subfolder. After unzipping the download, look for the x86 folder if you're running a 32-bit system, otherwise try the x64 folder.
don't forget SysInternals
Process Monitor
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
Process Explorer
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
I have Process Hacker. One thing I cannot understand is why there is not a keyboard Shortcut start built in.
Windows Task Manager >>> Control-Alt-Delete is EXCELLENT for a unstable and non responding Operating System, If the same thing happens and I have not Pre-launched Process Hacker...............
Anyway as it turns out I know what to do and I hope this will help my fellow members.....(Please see guide below)
1 Create or put you Application shortcut on the desktop.
2 Right click the shortcut icon
3 Scroll down and left click properties
4 Look at the Tabs at the top and click Shortcut
5 Scroll down to the "shortcut key" option box, (It should say "None") Do not waste your time trying to highlight or delete the "None" word, Just put the cursor into the "None" rectangle box.
6 Now on the keyboard put in "YOUR" desired shortcut combination I suggest Control - Alt- (& YOUR CHOSEN LETTER)
7 Click Apply and Ok now whenever you use your Keyboard Combination THE APPLICATION WILL OPEN.
Finally this method works with any application shortcut.
My current fave is DTaskManager (http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/). I'm currently comparing the two. One thing I see is that Process Hacker seems to almost give *too* much info on the main Processes screen. DTask has a two tiered approach; one tab for Apps (high level), a second for processes (low level, more detail). Process Hacker's processes has more info and better presentation than DTaskMan, but I don't see an easy way to set up a similar Apps tab.
Actually, what I'd love to see would be allowing multiple instances of the processes tabs, where different sets of columns could be selected in each.
The only other thing is the fact that the System Info (which is what I look at most) is a separate window, not a tab. I'm not sure if that's better or worse, but it's noticeably different.
Process Hacker
First time user ... very impressed. Any detractors need to realise that this is open source, so they have nothing to lose by trying the product.
Windows Process Manager is also under constant review so that it can be improved and bugs can be ironed out. I give it 'thumbs-up' as well as 4 out of 5 stars.
surferjoe
(email supplied)
Could wj32 please comment on the issues mentioned by Smurf (http requests and crash - #54737) and IronPlatypus (crash - #54600)? Thanks you very much.
"issues mentioned by Smurf (http requests and crash - #54737)"
Bug reports with crash dumps would be appreciated... I don't know about the network requests, but they seem to be due to the signature verification. I'm working on it.
"IronPlatypus (crash - #54600)"
Same as above. Though I think I've fixed this particular bug (for the next version).
Thanks wj32 for responding here which is appreciated. It's always good to have some direct interaction from authors and devs.
i'm looking for a program that will show outbound connections and total data transferred to each of those connections - will this program do that?
sometimes my network meter shows outbound traffic in the range of 120-300 kbps or so for a few minutes and by the time i can look at the connections its gone...i worry a little about malware now...i'd like to know which program is causing these uploads...
any help thanks...
I would say you could use comodo firewall. it has a nice connection board.
I have Win7 64bit and they have just upgraded to 64bit. I used it all the time and missed it but now I am glad they have upgraded it. Wonderful piece of software that has only enhanced my computing
Why does Process Hacker do http requests every 5 seconds or so? Sometimes to verisign, sometimes to an unknown host...
Also, Properties->General on either DPCs or Interrupts consistently crashes Process Hacker on WinXP SP3 (at least on mine)...
Does Process Hacker have a facility to view and terminate Tasks separately? I have looked for it in vain...
Darn fine proggy, thank you!
Another thing to try is Prio http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html
This adds enhancements to the existing Task Manager.
I agree with IronPlatypus's comment below. Process Explorer and Process Hacker have a somewhat different feature set which means each is better suited to certain tasks.
For example the Network and Services Tabs in Process Hacker allow me to more quickly get an overview of what is going on in my PC. Process Hacker also provides more detailed process information. I can also inject code into dlls which is extremely useful when evaluating security products.
On the other hand I really like the Find feature in Process Explorer and I really miss it when using Process Hacker (Yes that's a heavy hint to wj32 the developer.)
Given both programs are small, free and don't require installation it makes perfect sense to keep a copy of each in your toolkit. That's what I do.
Gizmo
"On the other hand I really like the Find feature in Process Explorer"
It's in Process Hacker.
Aha. Just checked and you are right. It's nowhere accessible from the toolbar but can be evoked by using Ctrl F.
Well there you go; I've been bitching about the missing "find" for months:)
Gizmo
You might want to mention that your tipster, "wj32", is the author of processhacker.
Yes, I did tick the "I am the author" box in the affiliations section. Don't know what happened there...
Is this similar to "Process Explorer" and if so, how does it compare ?
In my opinion, you should keep both at your disposal since they take up so little space. However, Process Hacker is the better program - it does just about everything Process Explorer can do, and more. You can view connections (you could call it a graphical version of the netstat command). You can view services, and it alerts you when services are deleted or created. It can find hidden processes. It can do some other things too, but those features I think are the key ones.
The downside is that it crashes periodically (on my two computers, at least). Not too often; maybe once every two or three days.
"crashes periodically.. Not too often; maybe once every two or three days." that's certainly too often for me, sounds pretty unstable.. anyone else experiencing this?
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