There are many times when a process will hog your CPU, such as when converting audio/video files, or working with compressed archives. Because these processes completely consume the CPU, your system becomes sluggish to respond and using the computer for other tasks becomes impossible while these processes are running.
You either wait for the process to finish or kill the process if you urgently need to use the computer for other tasks. There is a better way than this two that is to lower the process priority of the tasks that’s causing the high CPU usage. By default, all processes are at Normal priority. You can set it to Realtime, High, AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal and Low in Windows Task Manager. Problem is, when your computer is sluggish, it’s tough to open up Windows Task Manager and set the process to Low.
What you need is a program that can detect high CPU usage and automatically set it to Low priority and then set it back to Normal once it is no longer hogging on the CPU usage.
ProcessTamer is a FREE and super efficient utility for Microsoft Windows XP/2K/NT that runs in your system tray and constantly monitors the cpu usage of other processes.
When it sees a process that is overloading your CPU, it reduces the priority of that process temporarily, until its CPU usage returns to a reasonable level.
You’ll see a balloon tooltip in your system tray whenever Process Tamer adjusts or restores the priority of an application, so you’ll always know what it’s doing and why.
Of course there are times when you probably won’t want Process Tamer to change process priorities, such as when playing games or if you are burning a cd/dvd on a slow computer; just right click its tray icon and UNCHECK enable. Or you can also specify override rules for specific applications in order to tell the program to ignore them, force them to high or low priorities, or even to kill them as soon as they are found running.
Very useful tool. Although it’s free, the author of this tool encourage users to generate a free license key from his website. I’ve tried setting the clock 1 year ahead and the most I got was a popup asking me to generate a free license key. I am still able to use this tool even though I did not enter any license key.
Related posts:
I recommend Process Lasso for this task, which also completely free, but has capabilities in excess of Process Tamer and has a smaller footprint. Some users may prefer it.
hey does anyone know how to automaticly set the process priority to low? maybe some setting in vista? the problem is that the google desktop search hogs resources on my computer. Thanks for any help.
Many thanks Liliput. You’re link worked fine. I was going to Google it but got sidetracked.
thanks again
Try tis dude
majorgeeks.com/Process_Tamer_d4651.html
Sometimes it is wise to search for other place to download it. (Google it).
But you have to be careful from which site you download. MajorGeeks, Snapfiles, Softpedia and etc… They are known to be safe from Virus & Spywares.
Once again, GREAT Tips Raymond. Tks.
Try tis dude
majorgeeks.com/Process_Tamer_d4651.html
Sometimes it is wise to search for other place to download it. (Google it).
But you have to be careful from which site you download. MajorGeeks, Snapfiles, Softpedia and etc… They are known to be safe from Virus & Spywares.
Once again, GREAT Tips Raymond. Tks.
Hi, Sorry to inform you the download link for Process Tamer doesn’t work.
says “Not found on this server”
Hmm thanks for the heads up with this…looks useful!
Another great release!! Thx!!
[...] You either wait for the process to finish or kill the process if you urgently need to use the computer for other tasks. There is a better way than this two that is to lower the process priority of the tasks that’s causing the high CPU usage. By default, all processes are at Normal priority. You can set it to Realtime, High, AboveNormal, Normal, BelowNormal and Low in Windows Task Manager. Problem is, when your computer is sluggish, it’s tough to open up Windows Task Manager and set the process to Low. What you need is a program that can detect high CPU usage and automatically set it to Low priority and then set it back to Normal once it is no longer hogging on the CPU usage. (more…) [...]