System Explorer 5.5

System Explorer is a very well-constructed process manager. It's similar to Windows Task Manager but it offers far more detailed information and has added functionality. For example, after you install the software, it asks permission for a quick scan of the system processes. Afterwards, it looks them up in an online database, telling you about the validity of your programs and possible threats.

Processes are organized in a tree so you can easily see the relationships between them (what started what). The utility also tells you the parameters used to start the executable files which is a great way to differentiate between the various uses of a process with multiple instances (e.g. svchost.exe).

The history tab is interesting and potentially very useful for debugging purposes or simply keeping an eye on how some programs behave. Information is very clearly organized showing you when a process started or stopped, with what parameters and with what status code.

As usual, the latest updates bring a number of bug fixes but also two notable additions to the user interface. One of them allows you to quickly display summary info about your system by moving your mouse pointer to the upper right corner. This includes CPU and memory usage, the frequency at which the processor is operating and a few other useful statistics. The other notable addition to the interface is the I/O Delta column which shows bytes transferred to/from disk for each process. This is hidden by default so you have to manually add it to the columns. more