The default Windows Task Manager is very basic and provides only a few controls. You can kill a process but if you want some details about running processes in your system, you have to look for Windows task manager alternatives. Process Hacker is yet another task manager for Windows but has many more controls and functions that you’ll love using.

Download Process Hacker and install the application. During installation you can make it your default task manager, so that the next time you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del Process hacker is invoked. It will replace the default Windows Task Manager and open up.

Here is how the basic interface of Process Hacker looks :

Why you should use Process hacker as your default task manager

Here are the reasons why you should try out this task manager as a replacement of Windows default task manager:

More options are provided with every running process: The Windows default task manager has a serious problem. There are only a handful of options and you can only kill a process or a process tree and nothing more.With the Process hacker task manager you get a large array of advanced options. From the right click context menu you can:

• Terminate a process completely.
• Suspend a process.
• Restart a process.
• Reduce working set.
• Set priority.
• Run the process for a selected user.

There are more options provided which you can make use of if you want. For example: Creating a dump file, search online, copy that process etc. (also see: Kill Applications at a Scheduled Time with Process Assassin)

See the CPU and memory usage from system tray: Just navigate to View—> Tray icons and you can watch the CPU and memory usage from the system tray itself. Hovering on the system tray icons shows you additional details and how much memory each process is consuming.

Get instant notification when a new process is initiated or stopped : You can configure Process Hacker to give instant desktop notifications when a new process is initiated, stopped or deleted. Right click the system tray icon and set up the required notifications that you want to see.

Process Hacker works with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.