No doubt, most Windows users do nothing except turn on the system, do what they need to do, and complain about Microsoft when the system crashes or does something that indicates the PC is unstable. I know. I’m generally one of them. But, with a little bit of learning and the aid of a program such as the one we are looking at here, you can exert detailed control over Windows. What we’re talking about is the ability to control the individual processes running on your PC. WinTasks, by Leading Interactive, is a great utility for exerting this fine control.

An Overview

To understand what WinTasks does, you need to understand a little about how processes work with Windows.

A process, in Windows, is an instance of a program which is open and running. Windows can control the program in this means. It allocates the necessary memory and files to allow the process to run. So, by managing the ongoing processes, Windows can control how the PC is running those programs. The operating system rates each process in order of importance. This importance basically signifies the pecking order of the process when it comes to accessing the limited resources of the PC’s processor. Windows uses six different priority levels: low, below normal, normal, above normal, high and real-time. According to the WinTasks documentation, below normal and above normal are only supported the Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and therefore are not supported by WinTasks. A process can be divided into a number of sub-activities, called threads. Each process has at least one thread, which is the main thread and is the process itself. Additionally, though, there can be multiple threads for a process. This allows a program to perform multiple tasks at one time without disturbing the user interface.

You can view the ongoing processes on your computer by viewing the Windows Task Manager. The quickest way to get to it is to give your PC the old three-finger salute - CTRL-ALT-DEL. Here you can manually end processed and perform some other operations. There is a lot more than can be done with these processes, though, and this is where WinTasks comes in.

Capabilities

WinTasks is a utility dedicated to controlling Windows processes with a higher level of customization and detail than can be done with the Task Manager. Opening up WinTasks presents a classy interface with a list of all active processes along with detailed information about each process. Each process entry (as seen below) shows the process priority, name, path to the executable (program) being run by the process, the number of threads under the process, the CPU usage by the process, the amount of memory taken up by the process, and the time and date the process was started.

Highlighting a process shows a more detailed description of what the task is in a window at the bottom of the program (if it is a Windows task). Also, there is a series of buttons at the top of the program to allow you to stop a process, increase/decrease the priority, search for a process or start a new process. So, you can simply highlight a particular process and perform a variety of operations on it.

WinTasks also allows you to do other things. You can view the Auto-Start list to see a list of all programs started automatically when Windows is started. You can then enable/disable or add/remove processes to easily control which programs are started automatically. The Windows list shows you a list of all Windows associated with a given process, whether they are minimized, normalized, or maximized, visible or invisible. What is interesting is that there are typically many more window open associated with a program that you can see. The ones you cannot see are simply invisible. but, with WinTasks, you can force them to be visible. Another neat feature is that WinTasks can display a list of all modules associated with a given process. Most programs have a series of supporting files such as DLLs that are used by a program when it runs. WinTasks can shed some light on what modules are being used. You can also get a graphical representation of CPU and memory usage on your PC and view it in 1 minute, 10 minute, 2 hour and 24 hour time frames.