From Liutilities
By Terry Currier
In January I did a review of the WinTasks 2000. WinTasks 4
Professional is their latest version. It does everything better by giving you
more details about the process. Bringing up WinTasks it shows you how many
processes (programs) you
have running, how much memory is in use, and CPU
usage. Same as before, but now it will show you even more information about the
processes running. For instance click on a process, then click on modules, it
tells you what other processes are working with, or using that process. A DLL in Windows is a program part that is
dynamically linked during the execution of a program, when needed. DLLs are
often used for sharing program code by several different programs. With WinTasks
it is possible to find out which DLLs are used by a specific process.
To the right is the opening screen of WinTasks. I'll use descriptions from within the help manual in PDF format. It can show the different options or things available to the user better then I can. In the main window a list is showing the processes that are running on the computer.
Process icons: (1) shows an icon that describes the
priority of the process. The four different levels of priority (low, normal,
high and real-time), are represented by four different icons. (2)
shows whether the process is important for the functioning of the operative
system (red) or if it is a normal process (black). 
Process name: (3) shows the name of the process. The name is most often the name of the executable. If the program has a visible main window, the name is instead the title given to the main window. Notice how I have this document open and where it started from. By clicking on a selected process a second time, the process can be given a user defined and more descriptive title.
Executable: (4)
shows where the program is stored meaning that the complete search path for the
program is displayed.
Priority: (5)
shows the priority level for a process.
Threads: (6)
shows the number of threads per process (not supported in Windows NT).
CPU Usage: (7)
shows the process’s use of the CPU in percent (0-100) (not supported in Windows
98).
MEM Usage: (8)
shows how much of the internal memory the process is using (not supported in
Windows 98).
Started: (9)
shows when a process was initiated.
Stop process: (10)
is used to stop one or more of the selected processes.
Note – Where it mentions CPU and Memory usage is not supported, they are talking about for each process. It does give a CPU and Memory report on the bottom bar. For Windows 2000 and XP it works and you can even sort by memory use.
So what (again) can you do with WinTask? You can have it give a greater priority for your defraging so it will actually finish with out so many interruptions. Burn CD’s by giving the software a high priority and you won’t be making so many coasters.
New features also include autostart. Click on it, and
WinTasks displays the programs that automatically load when you
startup your
computer. From there you can disable the program so it won’t start, add another
program, or remove it. The add, and remove function works directly with the
Windows registry.
Statistics
The statistics window shows CPU use and how the internal
memory is used. The 
information is shown for the selected process (green) and for the whole
system (blue). The information is continuously updated even when the statistics window or
WinTasks are minimized. By moving the mouse over one of the graphs, it is
possible to read the time as well as the value for the CPU utilization and
memory use for a position/time. Note the spike in CPU usage? That is when I
started up another program.
WinTasks also keeps a log of programs that are started and stopped. This makes it easy for you to experiment the best ways to recover memory.
If you want to better the performance of your computer WinTasks is a great place to start. You can download it for $37 (US) get a boxed version for $57, and if you have a previous version you can get it for $25. The Standard version is $20 less. Check their web site, some times they have discounts of $10 off. If you would like to try it out you can download a 30 day trial version from www.tucows.com (not the Professional version.) Make sure you type in the full name of wintasks there is another program called wintask for automating task on the computer. http://www.liutilities.com or call (800) 903-4152
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