IDEA: Process Watcher.

[thancock20]

This is my first request, and I think it will probably be pretty simple.  There may even be a program that already does it, but I haven't found one.

Anyway, my annoyance is that I have a few programs (Firefox being the notable example), that take forever to load, forever to shut down, and also eat up a lot of ram.  I frequently find myself keeping Task Manager open while running these programs, but that is an inelegant solution at best.

What I'd like to see is a small program that sits in the System Tray and watches for specific process(es) (a user configurable list would be best of course).  It would then notify the user when:

1. A process in the list starts running.
2. The process' ram usage crosses a specific (also user configurable) threshold.
3. The process is no longer running.

Also, being able to configure the program to watch for any combination of the these three events for each process would probably make it more useful to more potential users.

Thanks to anyone who considers my request.

[Veign]

Something kinda like:
http://www.veign.com/application.php?appid=110

[thancock20]

Hmm.  Actually the veign program will monitor the ram usage, but won't tell me when the program starts or stops.

It also appears to no longer be watching the program after I stop and start it, so I have to tell it to watch it every time I run it.

Sorry, but it's not really what I'm looking for.

[Veign]

I only posted it as a starting point.  If it worked minus a couple features, I would be willing to hear how you would like it to work and make modifications for a future release.

[thancock20]

Oh, sorry.  I was half asleep when I wrote the reply.  I didn't mean for it to sound that harsh.

Anyway, it does monitor ram usage - as well as other things I didn't mention - so that's good.  I put a watch on Firefox to gauge it's ram, but I noticed that after I stopped and restarted Firefox it was no longer watching it.  A persistent watch would be preferable to having to set one every time I run Firefox.  I looked, but couldn't find a setting for that.  Is there one?

Oddly enough, the message box - which I thought would be more obvious than the small popup - came up behind Firefox instead of in front of it.  The only reason I noticed it was because I had task manager running to test the program.  So, it would probably be good to modify it so it's always on top.

Also, notifications for when a watched process starts and stops are not there.  These are the main features I'm looking for.

I would also like options for it to start up with windows (though this could be easily done by adding it to the startup folder, so isn't critical), already running its watches, and minimized.  Sort of a set it up once, and not have to worry about it.  Just get notifications.

I'm not sure how simple it would be to add these into your existing program, but I certainly do appreciate your willingness to look into it.

Thank you very much.

[Veign]

I will make some notes and look into it.  I should have time this weekend to review your requests.

[thancock20]

That would be great.  Thank you.