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 WinTasks Pro
February 28, 2005 - Part I
Preface
Often when using Windows, you need to see what programs are currently running and where they were started from. The standard Task Manager (accessed by the combination of the Ctrl, Shift, and Esc keys) in Windows XP lets you do many things, but it's helpless when you want to learn what folder on your computer the application was started from or the time of its launch.
Then a friend told me that he thought WinTasks Pro could do the job. The evaluation version can be downloaded free from the developer's Web site. I was eager to test it and see whether it was what I'd been looking for.
Launching the program
After installation of the program (which takes less than 10 seconds), you are advised to update the program's process library with new definitions. This update allows you to renew the programs' definitions so that the program would better name running programs, and give them clearer descriptions, thus making it easier for a user to figure out what is running his machine and decide about the intentions of those applications.
Working with the program
The program's main window looks like this:
The left column lists all running processes, which can be sorted by name. However, this option works somewhat worse than it does in the standard Task Manager, causing me some discontent. By this, I mean that when you select the option to sort running programs by name, WinTasks instead sorts by name the documents opened in those programs, not the programs themselves.
This is very inconvenient, because if you have two Internet Explorer windows with different Web pages loaded into them—say, Google.com and Yahoo.com—those pages would be displayed at a big distance from each other. The same applies to any documents open in Word, Excel or any other application that supports several open documents.
Additionally, how WinTasks Pro sorts by name can be totally unclear. In the screen shot below, Yahoo! stands much higher than the ABC News Web page:
Though all programs are now paired, you have to click the Refresh button constantly for the programs to be appropriately positioned in this list.
The program sorts by properties other than name without any problems, however.
A big plus for the program is that it gives common, simple names and descriptions to standard Windows processes and services, making it easier for you to figure out what each program does and why it is needed. LSASS.exe, for example, might seem a little confusing in the standard Windows Task Manager, whereas WinTasks Pro gives the process a simple, comprehensive description that explains its role and dismisses any worries about its legitimacy:
The program also allows you to terminate several selected processes at a time, which is good if a virus has infiltrated your system and is running several copies of itself in the machine's memory. (If you kill just one of the parallel processes, the co-run virus will restore the original virus.) Through this feature, I was able to terminate an active virus by killing separate virus instances. This option is similar to Task Manager's End Process tree, but I cannot confirm that this method works in all cases. When you select an application, you can add a personal note to it.
Read next:
Continue to Part II
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