Link Safe

Windows comes with a built-in tool that monitors your PC and kills misbehaving programs and processes. Six free alternatives that do an even better job.

Process Explorer doesn’t require installation, which means you can run it directly firom a USB flash drive when it’s needed. It displays a list of running processes and colour codes them to make them easier to distinguish, often adding icons so you can tell which programs they belong to.

The list of items can be sorted to make resource-hogging applications easier to find, and you can right- click an item to set its priority from one of seven levels on offer, ranging from Real-Time to Idle. The same right click menu will also let you kill a process, kill a process tree (including all the other items related to a process) and scan suspicious entries using the VirusTotal online virus checker (www.virustotal.com).

If you’re unable to identify a running process, you can choose to ‘Search Online’ to find out what it is and where it comes from. Double-clicking an item will also bring up a very comprehensive Properties window. If you come across a file or folder that can’t be deleted because Windows claims it’s being used, Process Explorer can help you find out which process is responsible so you can remove the lock. Process Explorer is a great tool and if you want to set it as your default task manager, simply go into Options and select ‘Replace Task Manager’.

The processes are colour-coded to help you understand them, but it’s not immediately clear what each colour means. You can find out by going to Options, Configure Colours, but this could be more clearly presented. Also, you can only find out what the hardware graphs at the top represent by hovering your mouse over them. We would prefer to have permanent labels to make them easier to read at a glance.

System Explorer tells you everything you could possibly want to know about everything that happens on your PC, both in the past and right now. The tabs along the top provide access to information relating to Processes, Performance, Connections and History Under Processes, you can filter the list of running processes by users; grey out Windows system entries; show or hide services; and switch to a tree-view mode. As well as showing the resources being used by your PC’s processes, the software can run a security check on them and identify potential malware using its online security database.

When installing the program, you can choose between two View modes: Task Manager Mode (which uses tabs and is optimised for performance) and Explorer Mode (which has a vertical menu with all its tools listed).

System Explorer is packed with features but they are crammed into a very cramped design, which can make it confusing to understand and navigate.

When a process starts to misbehave or consume too many system resources, the simplest solution is to terminate it. However, by this time your PC may have already slowed to a crawl. Process Lasso takes a pre-emptive approach and automatically stops programs hogging resources in the first place. It lets you adjust the priority of programs and switch between two power modes: ProBalance (the default) and EnergySaver Enabled, which conserves energy when your PC is idle. There are also four Power Profiles available: Balanced, Bitsum Highest Performance (great for gaming), High Performance and Powersaver.

The best thing about Process Lasso is that you don’t need any great technical knowledge to use it and it can be left to manage things automatically.

Certain features, such as the Process Watchdog (which monitors memory and CPU limits), are only available for a set period before you’re pushed to upgrade to the paid-for Pro edition. Also, some of the more advanced options could be easier to understand.

The 'Lite' part of this program's name tells you this is a cut-down version of a more powerful paid-for product, but don't let that put you off. The software displays all running processes and has columns showing processor and memory usage, drive activity and more. Simply right-click a process to kill it or adjust its priority. You can also set what the program should do when you double-click an entry (stop it, restart it, switch to it or open Settings).

This is an excellent open-source task manager that offers much of the same functionality found in Process Explorer. Processes are colour-coded and you can terminate individual ones or entire trees. It's also easy to identify and kill any programs that are accessing the internet without your knowledge. However, it hasn't been updated in a year, which is a big negative.

DBC is an attempt to replicate Windows 8's superior Task Manager in Windows 7. It's a decent effort, although lacking in features compared to the others included in this round-up. It's fully portable, so you can run it from a USB flash drive, and has tabs for Processes, Performance, Users, Details and Services.