WinTasks Pro 5 Review - Autostart, Block list

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The Autostart button brings up a list of programs that are supposed to be started by default at boot time. Similar to the msconfig program provided on Windows 2000 and XP, you can add or remove programs from the list. What drove me absolutely nuts is that the Disable and Enable buttons, which are supposed to temporarily disable and reenable a program from starting at boot, give absolutely no feedback to the user. As a result, it gives the impression that the user is not using the program properly and I thought that WinTasks was malfunctioning.

The Block List however, can be quite useful. It allows you to prevent some executables from running. (Actually, WinTasks' logs show that the process did start, but WinTasks terminated the process.) It also has an explicit 'Allow List' as well, and combined with the Confirm New Process utility, you can get fine control over running processes. Keep in mind that almost everything creates a process, so it may take some time to create a list of allowed processes, much as you have to create a list of programs you want to let through a firewall. Hitting Confirm New Process also will cycle through every running non-system process and let you create that list.

I think that WinTasks Pro can be a great aid to programmers and developers, especially those who do a lot of work with multithreaded and multiprocess programming. The DLLs and Windows screens provide enough information to help programmers tell if their program has loaded the DLLs they needed properly. Combined with the Logs that WinTasks takes, it is now possible to see which modules and DLLs are loaded. Scripts can be written to handle situations such as "If process x takes more than 85%, lower its priority" or "If process y is using 70% of my memory, stop it." LIUtilities says that the programming language used in the scripts is still being developed, and in my opinion, this feature can make or break the purchase of WinTasks Pro.

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Comments On: WinTasks Pro 5 Review

· Does it check it only by name (eg. svchost.exe) or by complete location...    · I honestly don't know, but I can contact LIUtilities and get back to you.    · According to LIUtilities, identification is done by the Process Library and the...    · The problem with Wintask is it does not distinguish or validate running processes,...   >>> Post your comment now!

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