Process Monitor v2.03

By Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell

Published: December 10, 2008

Introduction

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities, Filemon and Regmon, and adds an extensive list of enhancements including rich and non-destructive filtering, comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names, reliable process information, full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation, simultaneous logging to a file, and much more. Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

Process Monitor Enhancements over Filemon and Regmon

Process Monitor's user interface and options are similar to those of Filemon and Regmon, but it was written from the ground up and includes numerous significant enhancements, such as:

Monitoring of process and thread startup and exit, including exit status codes

Monitoring of image (DLL and kernel-mode device driver) loads

More data captured for operation input and output parameters

Non-destructive filters allow you to set filters without losing data

Capture of thread stacks for each operation make it possible in many cases to identify the root cause of an operation

Reliable capture of process details, including image path, command line, user and session ID

Configurable and moveable columns for any event property

Filters can be set for any data field, including fields not configured as columns

Advanced logging architecture scales to tens of millions of captured events and gigabytes of log data

Process tree tool shows relationship of all processes referenced in a trace

Native log format preserves all data for loading in a different Process Monitor instance

Process tooltip for easy viewing of process image information

Detail tooltip allows convenient access to formatted data that doesn't fit in the column

Cancellable search

Boot time logging of all operations

The best way to become familiar with Process Monitor's features is to read through the help file and then visit each of its menu items and options on a live system.

Screenshots

Download Process Monitor
(1.2 MB)

Run Process Monitor now from Live.Sysinternals.com

Runs on:

Client: Windows XP SP2 and higher.

Server: Windows Server 2003 SP1 and higher.