Swapping the Task Manager for something a bit more useful - Process Explorer

This is a good place as any to start...
What do you use to review the processes and services running on your workstations?

The Task Manager is OK, but it doesn't provide you with much information about the processes and services running on your machine does it.

This is a nice introduction to a whole suite of utilities that I have been using for many years from Sysinternals, mentioned in my previous post.

Process Explorer

Introduction from Systernals site...

"Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Process Explorer works on Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003, and 64-bit versions of Windows for x64 and IA64 processors, and Windows Vista."

Follow link below to read more and download

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-nz/sysinternals/bb896653(en-us).aspx

A nice feature of the Process Explorer is that you can replace the standard Windows Task Manager. Select "Replace Task Manager" from the "Options" menu.