Decent WinXP CPU monitor that lives in the System tray?

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Baboon

251 posts

Ultimate Geek

#92978 10-Nov-2011 01:19

G'day.

Can someone recommend a decent WinXP CPU (and even better - disk, memory and network as well) monitor that lives in the System tray permanently? I'd like something that gives a little graphical representation in the tray, as Windows Task Manager does, only with a little more detailed info (e.g. the top five processes) when I hover over it, or bring up a menu from it's tray icon. I don't want something that needs a Window to give me the essential performance info.

TIA :-)

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

- Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)

bazzer

3316 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#543603 10-Nov-2011 12:26

Maybe SysInternals Process Explorer?

Tom_Rush

208 posts

Master Geek

#549095 23-Nov-2011 22:01

Used 'Process Explorer' for ages and just checked the version.

New version: Process Explorer v15.05

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

It was updated on the 20 September 2011
I wouldn't have thought for a minute developers are still maintaining these applications.

Does come with an 'active' CPU usage Icon/monitor in the notification area.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
68869 posts

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Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#549096 23-Nov-2011 22:04

Any specific reason why you need this? Just curious, because I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't load anything you don't need on your system - every little byte of RAM and every little tick of processor counts...

And if you have a machine that needs you to keep an eye on usage... Well, either upgrade the PC, or add memory, but putting more programs will certainly use some of the resources you already don't have.

These links are referral codes

Tom_Rush

208 posts

Master Geek

#549126 23-Nov-2011 23:20

True...ish.

I can only speak for myself when I say I used it on Windows XP to diagnose system usage patterns/problems and thinking way.. way.. back. I used it to inspect svchost.exe as it tells you what processes are attached to each svchost.exe

Having disk I/O is a bonus too when chasing down processes that don't let disks sleep and etc.

Once I finish system diagnosing...ing.....ing I close it.

Idle, the Sysinternals Process Explorer uses about 5% CPU on my olde worlde desktop PC.

As it's monitoring such a LARGE array of system resources it'd be nuts to leave it running just so you can see your CPU being wasted.

Which is probably why I don't run any Windows 7 widgets, for much the same reason.

Every CPU cycle is sacred.
Every CPU cycle is great.
If a CPU cycle is wasted,
God gets quite irate.

Let the heathen spill theirs
On the dusty ground.
God shall make them pay for
Each CPU cycle that can't be found.

Dag, now the song is stuck in my head.

Tom_Rush

208 posts

Master Geek

#549165 24-Nov-2011 01:58

Thought I'd see what Sysinternal Process Explorer did when it met Windows 8.
The memory management is a bit different on Win8 and was expecting an application failure.
Interestingly it works. Not sure if all the functionality available in WinXP is available in Win8, but it'll still display processes attached to svchost.exe and you can look at resource a specific process is using.

Windows 8 has a lot of the information available natively, but is nice to be able to use a known tool for those moment when you want to dig down into a process and etc.