Written By:
Date Posted: May 13, 2002

The modern Windows OS is a resource hog. I pretty much think all of you already know this, as the first thing many people do first is to delete useless programs from the Startup menu. For Windows, start MSConfig, and select how you want your PC to boot up, and what app to toggle on or off. Windows NT users can go one step further, and disable pointless services. I mean, if you don't even own a printer, why bother with the "Spooler" service? Now, if you're still running some version of Windows 9x, you don't need to deal so much with services, but background tasks still exist.

Once you do all these changes, the end result should be more free memory, and a more responsive system. The problem with this though, is that most inexperienced users probably don't know how to fudge around the task manager. LIUtilities is one company that has created a product that can do all of the above. WinTasks 4 Professional isn't just for n00bs though, as it actually goes beyond what MSConfig and Task Manager can do.

The boxed software arrived in a DVD style box. I suppose the one main benefit is lower costs, as larger cardboard boxes is a waste of packaging and memory. In theory, the CD should be better protected, as it won't get banged around in a spacious box during shipping.

Inside, you'll find your media, plus a small instruction manual. Most of the tools are explained, but as you start using the program, you'll see it's very intuitive. I should point out that I had some problems reading the CD in our AOpen DVD 16x drive. Dropping it in our Plextor worked fine, so perhaps the AOpen just had a hiccup.

Manage Computer Resources

Remove unnecessary processes instantaneously
Free up valuable memory and cpu resources
Create presets to optimize all common tasks
Use the built-in logs and statistics to eliminate resource leaks and other problems
Create custom scripts to automatically optimize the use of important resources

Optimize and Debug Software

Inspect your application's cpu and memory usage in realtime to optimize memory and cpu usage
View up to 24 hours of cpu and memory usage statistics to find memory leakage and other bugs
View windows, modules and threads owned by your application
Terminate unwanted processes and clean up after a program crash without having to reboot the entire system
Create scripts to start or stop your own programs when a particular condition is meet. For example, you could stop a server automatically whenever the client is stopped

Improve System Security

Find and kill unwanted background processes like viruses and trojans
Use the process log to find out which processes have been executed on your computer
Create scripts to prevent a specific process from running
Save the current process configuration to a preset, allowing you to instantly restore that configuration and terminate all unwanted processes.

Much like Performance Monitor and Task Manager, WinTasks 4 Professional does all this and more. Rather than opening up several programs, everything is consolidated in one spot. Granted, Windows tools comes free, but power users can appreciate having everything in one spot.

Although Wintasks improves on your system security, it doesn't do anything about trojans getting on your system. However, the program doesn't miss anything, and if indeed a trojan is present, you can effectively stop the process and clean the problem program out later.

The first screen you'll see is a list of all the processes currently running on your PC. One feature I particularily liked was the inclusion of process descriptions of most of the Windows services. Many times, when I used Window's standard task manager, I stared blankly while trying to figure out what certain processes were.

Power users are probably familiar with the "Priority" of apps. Basically, the higher the priority, the more system resources will be allocated to it. Task manager already allows you to do this, so this isn't a Wintasks specific feature, but at least it was included.

No management program would be complete without some method of tracking statistics such as memory and CPU usage. What's useful about Wintasks' implementation is that the stats gets logged over a period of time, allowing you to view trends. Now, you can already do this with Performance Monitor, but it's a lot harder to figure out.

Past versions of LiveWare made it easy to disable the Creative taskbar, but since I got the Audigy, it's always given me fits. I could uninstall it, but I do occasionally make use of it. There isn't any easy way (other than mucking around in the registry) to disable it, but Wintasks makes it easy to customize your autostart programs.

You can also easily add programs to your list by pressing "+Add". I don't actually want to autostart Outlook Express, but you can add any executible file you choose to the start up.

It's usually best practice to disable programs you don't want autostarted, but if you're absolutely sure you don't need the program, you can remove it altogether.

Another feature I liked, though not really that useful, is the Open Windows feature. Some programs, such as Photoshop, open a ton of Windows. Rather than clicking through them in the application itself, you can just do this in Wintasks. The above example isn't really a good illustration, as I'm sure anyone can navigate through 5 windows, but imagine if you have 15 or 20 of them open.

More for informative purposes, you can examine the modules needed to run whatever programs you use. In reality, I didn't really know what to do with the information provided here, but perhaps a high level system administrator would like this feature.

The last test I did was the killing of processes. The first test, I killed Photoshop (after saving all the images for the review), and the program immediately shut down without any prompts to save. The next test was to shut down IE, after opening a page I knew that would hang the browser (this was done with a local HTML file pointing at a corrupt Flash element that I'm still troubleshooting). In the past, task manager wasn't able to kill the process. This time, Wintasks did, although it took me two tries.

I didn't test out the scripting features, but one feature I did like was the ability to consolidate a bunch of programs into one task. Whenever I bootup, email, chat and IE are always the first 3 programs I start up. Instead of opening each one up separately, I consolidated everything into one button, and use that to start them up.

Final Words

WinTasks 4 Professional is one of those programs that I think would make a worth addition to any IT manager's software suite. Almost every Windows based troubleshooting tool is present in one convenient package, and it works as advertised.

At the same time, I'm left wondering if the majority of users will actually need this program. As I just said, almost all the Windows tools are here, so why not just use those? As a MCSE (keep your comments to yourself please ), I use all these tools daily, so Wintasks isn't a priority for me. However, I do like the fact that I don't need to open 4 different tools or windows to do everything. In that case, Wintasks has now joined my suite of analysis software.

For 60$, I do find this awfully expensive. Granted, this is for the retail version, and a electronic version can be had for 37$. LIUtilities offers a 30-Day money back guarantee, so it's something worth checking out.

LIUtilities:

Pros: Easy to use, total control over Windows processes, ability to consolidate programs into one button.

Cons: Doesn't do anything that doesn't already come with Windows

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