The Task Manager that is built-in to Windows is one of the most useful tool. Whenever a program crashes and hangs, the easiest way to solve the problem is to forcefully close the program by ending the task in Task Manager. On Windows 95 and 98, the combination shortcut key to bring up the task manager is the famous CTRL + ALT + DEL. However when it came to Windows XP, Vista and 7, it has changed to CTRL + SHIFT + ESC. Since it is so useful, malware creators have also started to block the user from running Task Manager. Some smarter malwares can even block or restrict popular third party task managing software such as Process Explorer, AnVir Task Manager and etc from running…
When you are stuck with such problem, one easy way to check the processes running on your computer is to use a Task Manager that can be run from MICROSOFT EXCEL! Most if not all of us only know that it is only possible to have such function through executable (.exe), vbscript (.vbs) file but thanks to Macro, it is possible via Microsoft Excel.
TaskManager.xls created by Didier Stevens is a small (41KB) and simple task manager implemented in Excel/VBA. It can list the running processes; and terminate, suspend or resume selected processes. You will have to first enable the Macro which is disabled by default because of potential Macro viruses. If Macro is disabled, you will ge the error “Cannot run the macro ‘TaskManager.xls!ThisWorkbook.MacroPRocessList’. The macro may not be available in this workbook or all macros may be disabled.”
There are only 2 buttons on TaskManager.xls. The List processes will show all running and active process on your computer and The Execute commands button will perform tasks such as terminate, suspend or resume processes. The screenshot below shows that I am about to terminate firefox.exe and suspend hkcmd.exe. Clicking the Execute commands button will do just that. Do note that TaskManager.xls is unable to terminate protected processes. For example, nothing will happen if you try to terminate the Client Server Runtime Process (csrss.exe) from TaskManager.xls.
TaskManager.xls is very useful but unfortunately it did not work in OpenOffice 3.3. Clicking the List Processes button will prompt an error saying “A Scripting Framework error occured while running the UNKNOWN script UNKNOWN. Message: Incorrect format for Script URI:”. Even the free Excel Viewer provided by Microsoft also doesn’t work. My guess is it only works on Microsoft Excel. I am listing TaskManager.xls as one of the must have tool for computer technicians.