Monitor and Fix your Processes
Don’t slow down your computer with an overloaded CPU
I like to run a lot of applications at the same time so a process manager is a very valuable utility. Moreover, we all pick up some viruses or spyware after a couple months of downloading a ton of crap on the computer. This crap usually hits your registry and sits in your processes, slowing down your computer. Sometimes, it’s really nice to know all about the processes so that you can kill everything you don’t need. Recently, I realized that I can actually manage my processes with some good free software. Here are two top choices:
Process Tamer is a tiny (140k) and super efficient utility for Microsoft Windows XP/2K/NT that runs in your system tray and constantly
monitors the cpu usage of other processes. When it sees a process that is overloading your cpu, it reduces the priority of that process temporarily, until its cpu usage returns to a reasonable level. Stop being a victim to an overloaded cpu - let Process Tamer keep your system responsive no matter what you’re doing.
ProcessScanner takes a snapshot of your system’s running processes, uploads the results to its website, then lists them in a page with
information on what each process does. The results are color-coded to help identify the processes that pose potential threats to your system. Granted, you probably have some spyware/antivirus programs running on your computer that should keep an eye on those things as well, but ProcessScanner is useful not only for alerting you to potentially harmful processes, but also for getting a better idea of what non-essential processes are running. This would be a great app to have on hand next time you want to prune your processes to only the essentials.
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Process Resource Monitor (PRM) is the equivalent tool on Linux. It runs a cron job that checks for CPU usage and e-mails you when runaway processes bring your server to its knees.
Beautifully simple - get it at http://rfxnetworks.com/prm.php