I am going to show you how to upgrade to a much improved and more powerful Microsoft Task Manager.
You might not know that the Microsoft Task Manager that you get with your version of Windows is not as powerful as it could be.
For example, a process is made up of many threads in it. With the basic Microsoft Task Manager that comes with any version of Windows, you cannot even see the specific thread information, much less interact with them. Also,
fix a very specific problem that happens when a program is running and has caused a window to open, but the window is not responsive. When the window is blank, or not functioning, it can be almost impossible to know what process is trying to run that window. Even if the program is responding normally, it can sometimes be confusing to see which process is associated with a window.
To find out what the name of a process is that’s running a window, we will use a very advanced and powerful tool. You might be thinking that you cannot afford a powerful tool, but the best news is that it is free!
Process Explorer is a very powerful and free Microsoft Task Manager.
Process Explorer is used on all versions of Windows. So whether you are still on XP or working with the latest Windows version, you can download and install Process Explorer and use a much better task and process manager than Task Manager.
Downloading is very easy. Microsoft updates the program behind a link, so that you can always get the most recent version of Process Explorer. So even if there is a new version that comes out after this article was published, this link always work.
Install Process Explorer
- Download Process Explorer.
- Save Procexp.exe your hard drive.
- Run the file after it’s completed the download.
- Click “Yes” to accept the terms, and yes if there is a security warning. The security warning exists because even though it is an official Microsoft program, it was downloaded off of the Internet.
Now that Process Explorer is started, you can see that it is very different than the default Microsoft Task Manager.
- You not only see the processes, but you can see them in a hierarchy, so you can see the parent/child relationship of the processes.
- You can drag the crosshairs from the Process Explorer menu to any window on your computer to see what process is running that window.
- You can suspend a process, which completely stops it from running, but it does not kill it. It only pauses the process, which is very helpful for fighting malware.
- Process Explorer color codes the processes, so you can easily see what is a Microsoft process run by Windows, and what is a user process run as part of an application.
So if you have looked at Process Explorer now, and are wishing that this free, powerful replacement for the Microsoft Task Manager could be easily brought up when you right click the taskbar and choose Task Manager, you’re in luck, because you can. I’m working on a post that shows you step by step how to replace task manager with Process Explorer so that you can use it as your default task manager. If you subscribe, you’ll see it when it posts. Or, you could keep coming back here all the time like a stalker – whichever you choose is okay with me. 
