Process Tamer usage tip

[eFotografo]

I've been using Process Tamer for several weeks now (in fact it was what brought me to this site in the first place  and it's saved my bacon on a number of occasions already. However a couple of times it was unable to help. Why? Because the ProcessTamerTray.exe process runs at NORMAL priority, and is therefore unable to do its magic when a couple of HIGH priority processes completely take over the CPU!

This exact scenario happened to me recently on a couple of occasions - for reasons I still didn't work out, the latest version of the sysinternals Process Explorer tool began using a full 50% CPU (that is, 100% of one of the two virtual CPUs) on my hyperthreaded P4, without showing the any window. Foolishly I started a second instance instead of Windows Task Manager ... and my machine stopped dead. Two processes, both high priority, eating 100% CPU meant a little over 35 minutes waiting for windows to bring up the task manager to enable me to kill one of the rogue processes.

So where does ProcessTamer fit into this? Since there is (currently!) no option to automatically start ProcessTamer with high priority, the trick is to define an explicit rule to force the priority high. This might seem obvious... but it's not, until your machine is hung and you can't get at ProcessTamer to restore the status quo

Thanks Mouser/DonationCoder for a superb tool!!

John

[mouser]

perfect timing - i was just about to release a new version when i saw this post and decided it would be a nice feature to add to make it easier for users to choose to run in this way.  so the new beta includes an option to run at high priority
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1656.0

thanks for the tip!