ProcessLibrary.com

SUMMARY: Free utility to decipher what’s running on your PC.

Ever wonder what’s running on your PC? One way is to run Windows Task Manager and you see this:

Some you can figure out easily, but some are so cryptic that you may have no idea what it is, what it does and is it neccessary. The good guys at Uniblue were nice enough to alert me to a free program called ProcessLibrary.com. This handy little program acts like the Windows Task Manager but adds

“Explanations accompanied by exhaustive advice on whether the processes are important for the stable and secure running of your system. The website also recommends if you should terminate processes or leave them untouched.”

The program accesses a database at Uniblue which gives more detail so that you can understand not only what it is but if it’s a security threat.

After loading the program and running it you see this:

Start the scan and you see a progress bar…

and then you see all the processes on your PC.

You can click on any process and see the following details:

And the catch – to run a security or registry scan, the link puts you into Uniblue’s products that you must pay for. However, you don’t have to purchase anything to get detailed process information.

The database does not have data on everything under the sun – for example:

But there is enough information even here to figure out what this is.

Here is one with only one clue – the filepath:

OK – it’s a marketing tool, but there’s enough useful information to demystify those arcane programs lurking under the hood. Knowing what you can safely turn off is a nice way to limit what’s running to what you need.

Email Joe