Process Explorer, part of the Sysinternals Suite, is a powerful alternative to Windows Task Manager. It provides detailed system monitoring, advanced troubleshooting tools, and deeper insights into running processes. Here are the most compelling reasons why Process Explorer is superior to Task Manager.

5 More detailed process information

There is never too much information

Task Manager is great if you want to look at basic process names and resource usage, so you can take action and close some of them. However, Process Explorer provides detailed information, such as process paths and detailed descriptions for each process.

If you double-click any process, you will see its path. This allows you to easily go to the file location and inspect it closer, or simply delete it if it’s useless or unrecognized.

But that’s only a small part. Process Explorer also shows the process's performance and GPU graph, along with information about its threads and environmental variables.

From the Properties menu, you can set permissions for certain threads or the security information of the process.

You can find the process you’re looking for in Task Manager's Details menu, but it’s much easier with Process Explorer. Just type the process’s name in the top-right corner, and the app will filter the processes as you type.

With Process Explorer, you can get a lot more information, which can be useful for troubleshooting your system and PC.

4 Detecting malware and suspicious processes

It’s a good tool to scan your system

Apart from showing you detailed information about any of the running processes, Process Explorer has a built-in integration with VirusTotal. This helps you scan any process with over 70 antivirus engines.

To use this feature, you have to access Options in Process Explorer, hover over VirusTotal.com, and select Check VirusTotal. All the processes will be scanned for any known malware or viruses. You may also right-click any process and scan it individually.

It’s a great way to find out if your system is healthy.

However, you can check if a process has any security issues. Right-click on any process, select Properties, andthen go to the Security tab. There, you will see if there are any flags associated with the process.

3 Real-time CPU, GPU, RAM, and I/O activity monitoring

You get more details about system stats

Task Manager has really improved lately, but it still provides basic stats. Process Explorer gives you more accurate live graphs and deeper system monitoring.

You can track disk read/write speeds, network usage, and system calls per process. For instance, you can even select which engines to use for GPU usage calculation.

It also shows paged and non-paged Kernel memory. This way, you can monitor apps that are causing high disk or memory usage, or detect memory leaks.

When you monitor CPU usage, you can see the graphs for each core. If you hover your mouse over the graphs, you will see exactly which process is running on each core.

The information can be overwhelming, but it might be useful for troubleshooting.

2 You can forcefully kill stubborn processes

Sometimes, you can’t kill a process using Task Manager

Some processes refuse to close using the Task Manager End task command. It happened to me several times, and there are multiple reasons for that. Process Explorer, on the other hand, doesn’t have that problem and from frequent observations, I noticed that it might be doing it faster too.

Process Explorer has two options to end a process: Kill Process and Kill Process Tree (stops the process and all of its sub-processes). However, it also has the options to restart and suspend a process, which are not available in Task Manager.

1 Finding which process is using a locked file

The file might be in use by a process

Many times, I’ve been in a situation where I wanted to delete a file only to get an error saying that the file is in use by a process or program. Sometimes you know what that is all about and closing a certain app helps.

However, sometimes you have no idea which app or process is using the file, and you just restart your PC, hoping that this time you can delete it.

Process Explorer helps you find exactly which processes are using a certain file. To find the culprit, click on Find and select Find Handle or DLL. Then, just write the name of the file and click Search. The app will find all the processes that are using the file. And while you’re there, you can just kill them to free up your file. It’s that easy!

Process Explorer is a lot better than Task Manager

You could argue that Task Manager has a more modern UI, but Process Explorer has many more features and it can display a lot more information about your system.

The SysInternals tool was designed for troubleshooting, and it really helps you understand better how the processes are intertwined and how they share certain resources. Of course, if you just need basic information, you can still roll with Task Manager.