Speeding Up Windows 7 with Process Explorer

18 June 2009 @ 5pm

Here’s a free, easy and quick method for routinely eliminating performance bottlenecks in Windows 7.

Download and install Process Explorer, which is part of the Microsoft SysInternals package. Launch the program, and you’ll be presented a beautiful display of all processes currently running on your system, along with a bevy of information about each process, including which files it has open, how much processor time it is using and more.

The tool works just like Task Manager, in that it can quickly kill processes that are hung or sucking up lots of processor usage, thereby speeding up your system dramatically. To kill a process, just right-click it and select “Kill” (you can also suspend it). Look for any items that are using lots of processor time (in the CPU column) and aren’t

However, Process Explorer holds a few key advantages over task manager.

• Process Explorer displays processes with familiar names and icons, making it easier to identify which process you are killing.
• The tool allows you to kill either a single process, or the entire process tree. For instance, if multiple instances of Excel are running and hanging or slowing down your system, you can kill them all at once rather than one by one with Task Manager.
• You can set the priority of individual applications with Process Explorer. Just right-click the name of a process, then select a higher priority (e.g. realtime) to boost its performance (though this will slow down other processes on your system).
• Process Explorer lets you see where a process’ files are located, so you can permanently remove them if desired (right-click a process, then select Properties > Environment).
• Process Explorer lets you restart processes instead of simply killing them — useful when an application starts to hang or use all available memory but simply needs to be kicked back into action.

Tagged
Windows 7