Alternative to Windows' built in task manager, this program shows real-time information including registry, thread, process and application data.
Process Monitor is an official utility for Windows released by Microsoft which displays more in-depth data about running processes.
The utility provides a familiar user interface with a list of running processes. From the list, you can easily spot the differences from the usual task manager (taskman). They include the time, process name, PID, operation, path, result and additional details.
Upon left-clicking a process, you can view even further information like the file properties, stack, etc. You may also direct Process Monitor to apply different filters to the list as well as view detailed properties about a process. The two functions being useful in tracking down either malicious activity or potential bugs in libraries or the operating system setup.
This intuitive utility can be used to save current operations and exporting them to a few different file formats such as PML, CSV or XML.
Further tools offered by Process Monitor include viewing network activity by processes, registry activity, process activity and more.
All in all, this is a rather useful tool that provides a number of advantages over your run-of-the-mill task manager and can be used to identify an array of malicious behavior and issues caused by programs currently running on Windows.
It is a tool that's packaged under Microsoft's advanced Sysinternals Suite.
Features of Process Monitor
- Comparison: Compare log files.
- File tracking: Track file system operations.
- Filtering: Filter results by process or thread.
- Hex view: View data in hexadecimal format.
- Logging: Log activities to a log file.
- Monitoring: Monitor file system, registry, process, thread and DLL activities.
- Network: Monitor network connections and traffic.
- Process tree: Show relationship between parent and child processes.
- Profiling: Profile process and thread execution times.
- Real-time monitoring: Monitor events occurring in the system.
- Search: Search for specific activities.
- Security: Highlight suspicious activities and accesses.
- Services: Monitor system services.
- Statistics: Generate graphical statistics of monitored events.
Compatibility and License
Process Monitor is provided under a freeware license on Windows from process management with no restrictions on usage. Download and installation of this PC software is free and 3.96 is the latest version last time we checked.
What version of Windows can Process Monitor run on?
Process Monitor can be used on a computer running Windows 11 or Windows 10. Previous versions of the OS shouldn't be a problem with Windows 8 and Windows 7 having been tested. It comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads.
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