Process Explorer
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Process Explorer

(7 votes, average: 3.71 out of 5)
3.7 (7 votes)
Updated May 8, 2026
01 — Overview

About Process Explorer

Process Explorer is an advanced process management tool as it offers several features to help you manage the processes you’re running, stop them, see their child processes, and more.

Windows’ process management tool is neat but lacks many details that some third-party tools offer.

It’s a lightweight tool for managing your processes, where you can analyze and oversee all the processes running, suspend them, stop them, keep track of CPU usage and temperatures, and more.

Portable

The first thing we should mention about this application is its lightweight nature. It is fully portable, meaning you won’t have to install it to start using it.

It makes it great for portability, as you can deploy it quickly using your USB drive or download the file, allowing you to use it on several devices.

Manage Processes

Process Explorer is, in short, a process management tool. It has several features that you could include under this umbrella, including process management, how many resources they use, and process suspension. You’ll also be able to stop processes from running, see child processes, and more.

All the processes are displayed in a tree view, where you can organize the processes depending on various criteria.

For instance, you’ll see which process takes the most resources, how hot the PC is, and, more specifically, how hot the CPU is. They’re also color-coded, which allows you to separate them by type.

Manipulate the Behavior of Processes

It gives you some powerful tools for managing the processes you’re running. You’ll be able to manipulate the behavior of the processes with the built-in tools, where you’ll be capable of making sure that you stop processes, suspend them, restart them, bring them to the front, and many other capabilities that you’ll find inside the interface.

Memory-mapped files and .dll files are also under surveillance so that you are always aware of what program uses a certain .dll file and what it handles by using it.

Conclusion

To conclude, Process Explorer is a complete process management tool. You’ll be able to manipulate how the processes operate, where and when you run them, how many resources they use, and more.

Highlights

Features & benefits

Process icons and service process highlighting
Process tree display
Start time and CPU time process columns
Option to hide the lower pane
Kill process tree
Configurable refresh rate
Refresh highlighting: new entries in the process, handle and DLL views are green, and deleted ones red
Listview tooltips
DLL descriptions in the DLL view; highlights relocated DLLs
Column selection and a wide variety of configurable process, DLL and handle columns
Asynchronous updates of all views
Configurable refresh highlighting effects
Save function saves process view and current bottom view (handle or DLL)
Fractional CPU usage
Job object information
Right-justified numeric columns with numeric formatting
Mutex properties shows owning thread if mutex is owned
More information in process properties
Accurate Registry key names for profile unload debugging
Extensive help file
Service descriptions on services tab of service process properties dialog
Jump-to-entry in the find dialog
Efficient refresh
Lists all process owners, even on Terminal Server systems
Moveable columns
Minimize-to-tray option
Process suspend/resume
Thread details including stacks
Specifications

Technical details

Latest version17.12
File nameProcessExplorer.zip
File size 3.35 MB
LicenseFree
Supported OSWindows 11 / Windows 10 / Windows 8 / Windows 7
Author Microsoft
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