If you’re an IT Administrator, it’s always good to know what processes, services, drivers, and active network connections are running on your computer or server. I love the Task Manager in Windows, but it’s not as detailed as I sometimes want .

What’s Running is a free program for Windows XP, Vista and 7 that gives you a detailed look of everything that is running on your system!

windows system processes

So what kind of information can you get from What’s Running? Here’s a quick overview:

Processes

windows process information

You can fully control your processes from What’s Running and get detailed information and stats, such as CPU usage, memory usage, and IO for each process.

You can also see which services are running inside a process and what IP connections each process has open. You can start, stop, and set priority also.

Services

windows services

You can start and stop services or get detailed information about each service, such as which processes run inside the service. You also get information such as the startup account name, the startup type, and more.

IP Connections

network connections

I like this tab especially since you can quickly see all active Internet and network connections for the system. You can see which ports (local and remote) are listening and which process and program is using that port.

Startup Programs

startup programs

You can also skip out on having to use MSCONFIG to manage startup programs in Windows too. You can disable startup programs or delete them completely if you like. It will find all startup programs regardless of whether they are in the registry or in the Startup folder. You can create your own startup programs also.

System Information

system information

Lastly, you get detailed system info about your PC such as OS version, Service Pack, installed memory, processor info, and more.

The other nice feature of the program is that you can take a snapshot of all your services and processes, etc and then compare it to another snapshot that you take later on.

This way, you can setup a system and then see all the new processes, services, drivers, etc that are created when you install a new program, for instance. Overall, it’s a very polished program for Windows. The version for Windows 7 is still in beta, but works fine. Enjoy!