System Explorer could be defined as the standard Windows Task Manager on steroids.

This full-featured system analyzing tool lets you take a sneak peek at everything that’s going on in your system, from currently active processes to installed drivers, including also network collections, startup applications and Internet Explorer add-ons, if you have any.

The good thing about System Explorer is that it enables you not only to see what's brewing in your system, but also take action. That is, you can end any active process or delete items from the startup menu, to name a couple of examples. Another feature I specially liked is the possibility to obtain more information about each process from Google, or check it for virus with an online antivirus tool. The program includes loads of other interesting features, for which having a bit of documentation would have been great.

System Explorer doesn't require installation, so even if you're happy with the Windows Task Manager, which I doubt, you should definitely give this great app a try. You have nothing to lose!

System Explorer is a full-featured task and process manager that gives you an exhaustive view of all the activities currently going on in your system.

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System Explorer Portable is a special version of the excellent task manager System Explorer that you can carry around anywhere with you in your USB memory device, and run it right away on any computer.

Like its older cousin, System Explorer Portable is a much more complete, reliable and advance task management tool than the standard app that comes bundled with Windows. With this full-featured system analyzing tool you can take a sneak peek at everything that's going on in your system, from currently active processes to installed drivers, including also network collections, startup applications and Internet Explorer add-ons, if you have any.

But System Explorer still has an ace up its sleeve: not only does it let you see what's brewing in your system, but also take action. This means that you can end any active process or delete items from the startup menu, to name a couple of examples. Another feature I especially liked is the possibility to obtain more information about any given process from Google and ProcessLibrary.com, or check it for viruses with an online antivirus tool. The program includes loads of other interesting features, but unfortunately lacks documentation about them so you'll have to learn how to use them on the move.

System Explorer is a full-featured task and process manager that gives you an exhaustive view of all the activities currently going on in your system.

Download System Explorer Portable 1.4 in Softonic

The Windows Task Manager is quite a limited tool when it comes to check what's going on in your computer. Besides a long active process list, there's really nothing you can learn from this tool: no related applications, no libraries in use, not even the application those processes belong to.

This is why ProcX can easily become your favorite alternate task manager from now on. This excellent tool analyzes and displays all active processes on your system at any moment, including details about their use of CPU and RAM, their full path and many other useful data.

But the ace up this program's sleeve is the context menu you open by right clicking on any process. From here you can terminate it in several ways (though the differences among them are not that clear), search for more information about this process on Google and also mark the file to be deleted on next system startup. I personally found this last option simply brilliant, as it'll enable you to delete files that can't be touched because they're in use. ProcX also shows associated DLL files to each process and includes the option to set it as the default task manager – which I would definitely do. Plus, it doesn't require installation.

If you're looking for a serious, full featured alternative to the standard Windows Task Manager, ProcX is an excellent choice.

Download ProcX 1.000 in Softonic

Preventing data loss is never an easy job because there are so many things that can go wrong but Active@ Disk Monitor goes a long way to giving you peace of mind.

Active@ Disk Monitor is a disk utility that checks and monitors the status of hard drives to help prevent data loss using S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology). This program relies on your hardware supporting SMART so if it doesn't, it won't be of much use to you.

Active@ Disk Monitor monitors hard disk parameters such as Temperature, Head Flying Height and Spin-Up Time but most importantly, notifies you when a critical moment is approaching on your hard drive. Active@ Disk Monitor also displays hard disk information, current S.M.A.R.T. attributes and the overall status of the hard disk's health.

The only problem you may experience is when Active@ Disk Monitor kicks in while you are using your PC - it can seriously slow down whatever you are doing if it performs a full scan.

Active@ Disk Monitor is a useful tool to warn of impending disk failure before the worst happens.

Download Active@ Disk Monitor 1.2.648 in Softonic

Geekbench is a completely awesome cross-platform benchmark that measures the performance of your computer's processor and memory. Geekbench also offers the sexy Geekbench Result Browser which lets you compare your Geekbench scores with other Geekbench users.

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While Windows features its own task manager, there's always the possibility to use better tools with extended functionality like Webkeysoft Process Manager.

This piece of software displays a list with all the applications and processes that are currently active in your system. So far, there's nothing different from the Windows standard tool. But Process Manager goes a step beyond and offers extended information about each process, as long as some interesting options like the ability to show the file responsible for each process or a list of dependencies for each active process. This last feature comes in especially handy when you can't delete a file because it's being used by some unknown application.

The program includes some other nice details, such as a couple of meters to show CPU and RAM usage and a startup list where you can see the processes that are run when Windows launches. You can even configure it to replace the Windows standard task manager. But if there's something I would definitely change in Process Manager is its interface. The usual XP look would fit the program much better than that blueish skin.

Process Manager enables you to see what's going on in your computer with a high level of detail.

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Performance Monitor is a small program that shows you the CPU, Memory, Disk and Network utilization under Windows NT platforms (2000, XP+). It's composed by four fully configurable small graphs and it can work in the tray area also. The windows are fully anchorable and by moving the "CPU" window you'll move the other attached windows.

Performance Monitor can become transparent and permits you to forward left-mouse clicks so you can place it anywhere. You can also change the program priority saving CPU work and double its size for big monitor resolutions.

Download Performance Monitor 3.6 in Softonic

For those who like minute control of their system, CPUCooL is a set of very tiny system utilities that you can use to tweak the settings of your CPU and motherboard.

CPUCooL monitors the temperature, fan speed and voltages for many motherboards (check supporting files for supported systems). It includes a utility for shutting down the PC with a single key combination, and a basic optimizer for Cyrix, AMD and Intel chipsets.

A newly included option allows for varying the CPU frequency via the SMBus. If any of this makes sense to you, you might want to check it out. If however, it does not, you will probably want to stay away.

Download CPUCooL 8.0.4 in Softonic

SysMetrix is a skinnable clock and metering application. Its purpose is to provide system metrics in a variety of interesting, useful, and cool ways.

It can monitor and report on the hundreds of statistics including date, time, CPU usage, user name, IP address, machine name, Windows uptime, data about memory usage, drive space statistics and a lot more, up to more than 60 different kinds of data.

The good thing about SysMetrix is that you can easily customize its appearance by using themes which completely change the program's interface and sometimes even add new functions to it.

Download SysMetrix 3.41 in Softonic

Not only will it show you your CPU-usage, memory-usage and pagefile-usage, it will also show you you're down- and upload speed, the space left on your hard drives and since version 2.3 you can also see the temperatures of your PC and the fanspeeds of the fans in your computer.

Download Memory and CPU Observer (MCO) 2.3 in Softonic

Informer has no window. This is a text string dinamically showing you current system load. You can place it at the desired location on screen, change font and color. For more handy manipulation program places an icon to system tray. Unlike many others system monitors Informer takes a little of screen space.

Informer can display information about:

• Current system activity - CPU usage, number of running processes and threads, available memory, network connections.
• Full list of running processes with detailed information about each process.
• Fully qualified information about your computer system.
• Notification about system events.

Download Informer 3.2 in Softonic

Advanced visual process analysis tool which offers many more features than the built-in windows task manager.

It allows you to set the priority of each process permanently and blocks non-removable spy-ware, ad-ware or any other unpleasant processes from start-up.

Download orangeProcesstrace 2006 2.01 in Softonic

Rainmeter is a customizable performance meter, which can display the CPU load, memory utilization, disk space, network traffic, time and many more things.

Some of the features:

• CPU load
• Allocated Memory
• Network Traffic
• NT performance data
• Uptime
• Free disk space

Download Rainmeter 0.14 in Softonic

The Warecase eXtended Task Manager (XTM) is a powerful auxiliary tool designed for simplifying the environment of the software developer. XTM is an extended windows task manager and performance monitoring tool for Microsoft Windows 2000 OS and later versions of Windows. XTM can give fast solutions for sudden problems which may arise in a product's functioning without having to either reinstall it from the user workstation or even without needing to close the application.

Whatever your needs, XTM can provide significant added functionality to the development environment and facilitate both programming and testing. Our solution provides the developer with direct access to the flow of processes, allowing data collection and the ability to immediately act upon any problems that arise, in the quickest and most efficient way possible.

Download Warecase eXtended Task Manager 1.60 in Softonic

Motherboard Monitor (MBM) is a very detailed and powerful system monitoring utility that should enlighten the heart of any computer geek. It can monitor fan speeds, temperatures, voltages and more.

In addition, it provides detailed system information about your chip and memory. It also includes an alarm features that can send e-mail alerts, initiate an FTP transfer or even send a pager message if conditions exceed the user defined condition.

Download MotherBoard Monitor 5.3.7.0 in Softonic

One of most common reasons for your PC slowing down is processes that are hogging your system and taking all your CPU.

Process Lasso aims to solve this problem by reducing the priority of those processes that are not important and returned to a responsive level. It also works with multiple processes that are causing a problem so it can deal with more than one program at once. If you think that the program is prioritising the wrong processes, then you can define default processes that you want to be controlled or kept an eye on. Process Lasso also displays graphs and other graphical represeantations to show you which processes are requiring the most CPU usage. You can blacklist those processes that are showing rather high graph readings or that are clearly taking up more CPU usage than they deserve. Although the program requires no experience, it does offer advanced settings and twesking options to make sure that it only blocks those processes that are specified or targeted by yourself. Fortunately, the program itself is very low on resources so it will not add to your CPU hogging problems.

A very useful process monitor than will ensure your CPU only dedicates itself to those programs that really need it.

Download Process Lasso 3.04 in Softonic

Hardware sensors monitor utilizes sensor chips on smart motherboards to track system and CPU temperatures, voltages and cooling fans. By quickly catching an overheated computer, you can prevent disasters such as system instability or damage. The program is resource friendly, resides quietly in the system tray, and continually monitors the various parameters. By clicking its icon, you'll view real time values for each component.

Once it has detected an overheating state, Hmonitor can perform a number of tasks. First, it can sound an audio alarm, then shut down the system or optionally execute any selected application (i.e. sending E-mail alert messages to system administrator). It can also log information each minute to a file on your hard drive. From the settings dialog, Hmonitor enables you to set "yellow zone" and "red zone" temperatures for the motherboard and CPU. You can also set minimum fan RPM before a warning is issued. In addition, nominal values and thresholds can be adjusted for voltage parameters.

Download Hmonitor (Hardware Sensors Monitor) 4.4.2.2 in Softonic

WinPatrol uses a heuristic approach to detecting attacks and violations of your computing environment. Traditional security programs scan your hard drive searching for previously identified threats. WinPatrol takes a snapshot of your critical system resources and alerts you to any changes that may occur without your knowledge. You'll be removing dangerous new programs while others download new reference files.

When you run WinPatrol, you should notice that Scotty the Windows Watch Dog is standing on your Windows System Tray/Taskbar in the right lower corner of your screen. Probably next to your clock or speaker icons. He loves music.

Just double click on Scotty to see the valuable information he has found out about your computer. If you hold down the right mouse button you'll see a menu pop up with additional features. Using this menu you can select to have Scotty installed so he's always watching out for you. You can always go back at any time and change your mind and uncheck the "Always Run WinPatrol" menu option. This menu also provides a way to Exit WinPatrol anytime you want.

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Have you ever been in a situation where even Windows Task Manager can't close a process or program that has crashed?

Chances are you have because it's one of the curses of Windows but fortunately, there is a way to get round this problem. ProcessKO is a far more powerful alternative to Windows Task Manager because it kills those hard to close processes that simply won't go away. The program sits discreetly in the system tray and requires simply clicking on (so no keyboard use is required) to activate in times of trouble. It shows a list of processes that are operating at any one time but note that you'll need to understand the generic names Windows assigns to your programs to know exactly what you are closing.

Process KO closes instantly those programs that you select even if they've been impossible to kill in any other way. In addition, the program "learns" which processes regularly cause you problems. In this way, it allows you to instantly access those programs that frequently crash your system and close them instantly without going through a huge process list. Even better, it fits on a USB stick so it's perfect for network administrators that need to go around rescuing blocked PCs.

A much better option than Windows Task Manager although if your mouse crashes, then it's not much use at all since you can't access it.

Download ProcessKO 1.24 in Softonic

The apparent limitations in Windows standard Task Manager have encouraged many developers to create their own version of this tool, usually providing more information and more advanced tools.

This is the case of Security Process Explorer, a full featured task manager created by Glarysoft (who you may already know for their awesome Glary Utilities). This tool analyzes your system and creates a list with all the currently active applications and processes, each one of them complemented with extra data such as CPU and memory usage, threads, priority and also a rating according to the level of trust given by this program's users themselves. There's also a link to obtain more information about the selected process on the web, which takes you to a knowledge database created by Glarysoft (although the button clearly says "Google it!").

Security Process Explorer includes the usual set of features you find in this kind of apps: possibility to set priority, end any given process or see the associated files (DLL) linked to it. However, there are other Windows Task Manager replacements far more complete than Security Process Explorer.

Security Process Standard is a good alternative to the standard Windows Task Manager but it falls short of expectations when compared to other replacement tools.

Download Security Process Explorer 1.6 in Softonic