Occasionally when I open outlook 2003 it refuses to obey. After a while of messing around with it I worked out that for some reason it had opened multiple instances of outlook in the process tree. This is a fairly easy problem to sort out, go to task manager and end the process….but occasionally that freezes the computer.

I have been looking for a good solution to this when along came an open source hero….process explorer . Basically it does everything that task manager does only better. It gives you an icon in the task bar that shows the CPU memory and the application memory of the program you are using. It also has some great features such as:

• You can set the program to only allow one instance of any process thus eliminating unnessecary memory useage and allowing outlook to open smoothly!!
• You can seemlessly link to google to search for what a process might be that is in your list – a wonderful tool for an helpdesk guy like myself – so you can easily find what the 45trhe.exe is that is sucking 85% of your computer’s memory.
• You can configure the colours in the different processes (new objects, deleted objects,  services etc…) so that they are easier to manage.

Process explorer is a good tool, and a free one – which helps on the departments meager IT budget!!