How to: Use Process Explorer to manage your <strong>PC</strong> Use Process Explorer to manage your <strong>PC</strong> This alternative to Task Manager makes Microsoft’s built-in offering obsolete, writes Mike VanHelder 94 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to <strong>July</strong> <strong>2017</strong>
How to: Use Process Explorer to manage your <strong>PC</strong> If you use Windows, there’s a good chance you’ll have used the built-in Task Manager. Whether it’s to kill a frozen process, track down some malware, or figure out what’s eating up all that memory, the Task Manager is an invaluable tool for any intermediate or advanced user. But for enthusiasts that want extra control, more information, and a host of extra features, there’s a more powerful alternative available: Microsoft’s free Process Explorer tool. Process Explorer isn’t just a supercharged version of Task Manager with more insight and control over your system’s processes. It also includes the ability to sniff out viruses and identify when programs are clinging to software you want to delete. Part of the Sysinternals suite of Windows tools (formerly ‘Winternals’), Process Explorer can be downloaded from TechNet a la carte or as part of the entire suite. If you plan on completely replacing the Task Manager with Process Explorer – and eventually you probably will – you should get the whole suite. More on that later. Here are just a few of the things you can do with Process Explorer – available at tinyurl.com/o7k92tu. The basics When you first open Process Explorer, there’s a lot of information there and it can look overwhelming. Don’t panic. Here’s what everything is. In the top half of the main window, you’ll see a list of processes. This shouldn’t be completely unfamiliar if you’ve used the Details tab in Task Manager (aka the Processes tab in Windows XP and earlier). It lists the process name, the process description, CPU and memory usage, and the company name of the software’s creator – something that’s very useful when you’re malware hunting. You can customise your columns to include more or less information by right-clicking on the column heading, just like any other program with sortable columns. The processes are presented hierarchically, which means if a process spawns another process, the child process will be listed nested underneath the parent. If you’d prefer an alphabetical listing instead, just click the ‘process name’ column heading. This list is constantly updating, but if you want to freeze it in time – say, to examine a process that appears and disappears quicker than you can click on it – you can hit the space bar to pause the updates. There’s a lot more information here – the scrolling line charts at the top of the window, the colour codes, the lower pane showing DLLs and handles – but for now let’s focus on the process list. There’s a good chance you might find a group exists, and joining this will put you in touch with plenty of people who might be able to aid you in your quest. Search your email contacts Many people have used Task Manager to end a misbehaving process at some time or another. This functionality exists in Process Explorer as well, where it’s called Kill Process when you right-click a process. Process Explorer does one better than the stock Windows Task Manager by giving you the option to kill the entire process tree. Right-click a process, then click Kill Process Tree; or select Process > Kill Process Tree; or just highlight your process and hit Shift - Del. Why would you want to kill a whole process tree? Sometimes when a process stalls out, it’s not the real culprit. Instead, one of the child processes it has spawned is the actual bad seed (we’re looking at you, Chrome). Even when the original process is the true villain of the story, killing it can sometimes leave orphan processes behind that can’t do anything without their parent, but which suck up resources anyway. Killing the process tree solves both problems at once. <strong>July</strong> <strong>2017</strong> www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to 95
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