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ProcessQuickLink Makes It Easy to Find Out What a Process Does
Posted by Adam Pash at 8:00 AM on July 26, 2008
Windows only: Free application ProcessQuickLink adds small icons to the left of every running process in the Windows Task Manager that—when clicked—tell you what that process does. The app looks up its information from ProcessLibrary.com, which provides a description of the process and recommendations for whether or not you should feel comfortable disabling it. When your computer seems slow and bogged down with running processes you can't make heads or tails of, ProcessQuickLink's seamless integration with Task Manager seems like the perfect way to hunt down and eliminate your unnecessary processes. For a full snapshot of all your running processes and their priorities, check out previously mentioned ProcessScanner. ProcessQuickLinks is freeware, Windows only.
Tags: organise | processquicklink | task manager | windows
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
bsts
Posted 11:54 AM 26/7/08
Nice - but weird. It was unaware of a few processes I would have thought were common enough (GoogleUpdate.exe) to already be contained in the online database. Memory usage is a tad high as well at 6,140K.
bsts
Cornflakes
Posted 11:46 AM 26/7/08
Awesome! I caught an iTunes process trying to be sneaky. 86'd!
Cornflakes
Weazul
Posted 10:23 AM 26/7/08
@Weazul: I mean works
Weazul
Weazul
Posted 10:23 AM 26/7/08
Haven't really needed it but I've been using it for a while and it looks as advertised in my case.
Weazul
bharatpatel89
Posted 9:59 AM 26/7/08
Wow, this looks cool in theory, time to test it out
bharatpatel89
bigusfickes
Posted 9:08 AM 26/7/08
If you haven't seen Process Explorer, I highly recommend it. [technet.microsoft.com]
bigusfickes
phoenix
Posted 4:08 PM 26/7/08
Ooh - this is a good one, I might have to write it up. :) That it takes 6140k isnt so bad to me, it's pretty reasonable for an active application, and I imagine you would only run it if you were thinking about checking on your active processes as opposed to leave it running all of the time, right?
phoenix
ThaMofo
Posted 8:54 PM 26/7/08
AutoRuns + Process Explorer FTW!
ThaMofo
dps
Posted 11:50 PM 26/7/08
It seems only moderately helpful. At least on mine, the suggestion is not to terminate any of the 44 processes that were running unless causing problems. Then it says "Run a Free Performance Scan to automatically optimize memory, CPU and Internet Settings." Clicking it takes you to another program download, which when installed and run does a scan coming up with scads of things that need attention, but you must now buy the program to go any further. So I think it's a very misleading statement. Yes the scan was free, but useless since you must now spend $.
dps
edicius
Posted 1:03 AM 27/7/08
Installed it, found it useless since any processes that it told me it was okay to close, I already knew that it was okay to close them. Either that or it had no info on them (like IoloServiceManager). Uninstalled it 5 minutes later.
edicius
metaslugx
Posted 4:22 PM 27/7/08
It's UniBlue, run away!
metaslugx
phoenix
Posted 12:52 PM 28/7/08
@edicius: That's ridiculous - it's like saying "I have a bowl of ice cream, so forks are useless." It's useless for you because you didn't have anything worth killing, but that doesn't mean the app is useless entirely.
The app could be very useful for people who find tons of apps running that they don't know about - like on office PCs loaded with pre-imaged software, or new PCs loaded with crapware. Additionally, there's value in having an icon to click that does the search for you instead of trying to transcribe a process name that could essentially be a jumble of characters from your task manager window into Google. It has some use, just not for you, and for that I congratulate you!
@metaslugx: What's wrong with Uniblue?
phoenix
fallingup79
Posted 11:12 AM 29/7/08
This is cool because I've always wanted to know what all the crap was that was running in the background. Sweet!
fallingup79
DinoFeard
Posted 4:03 PM 26/7/08
It looks nice, but I prefer AnVir Task Manager. I highly recommend it http://www.anvir.com.
DinoFeard
tmullins
Posted 8:33 PM 27/7/08
I downloaded processquicklink which then promted me to buy speedupmypc but then whenever I clicked the "i" next to any registry item it prompted me to buy yet another program.
Nothing but an endless sales pitch.
tmullins
tmullins
Posted 8:30 PM 27/7/08
I downloaded processquicklink which then promted me to buy speedupmypc then whenever I clicked the "i" next to any registry item it prompted me to buy yet another program.
It's just an endless sales pitch.
tmullins
tmullins
Posted 2:03 AM 27/7/08
I downloaded processquicklink which then promted me to buy speedupmypc but then whenever I click the "i" next to any registry item it prompts me to buy yet another program.
It seems to be nothing but an endless sales pitch
tmullins
Ralph
Posted 3:30 PM 27/7/08
No thanks, Process Explorer does just the same for me.
Ralph
reynwrap582
Posted 8:49 AM 26/7/08
I've had issues with UniBlue software before, but I figured I'd give this a try.
So far it's not entirely useful, as most of the more obscure processes don't have any information available for them. I know what explorer.exe and svchost.exe and firefox.exe are. I know what all the standard windows services are. The information on other services I might not recognize is lacking, I'd have more luck typing the process into google (which is pretty much what I do, or use a hijackthis parser). Potentially useful software that lacks a very useful database of process information... It'd be more useful if it popped up a window with other information (like location of running process, how long it's been running, maximum CPU and memory usage, etc)...
reynwrap582