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2 more ways to get Process Explorer
Other download sites
Run by third parties, not by Microsoft Sysinternals. Prefer the official page above when it works.
Package managers
- winget
winget install --id Microsoft.Sysinternals.ProcessExplorer
About Process Explorer
Process Explorer answers the question Windows will not: which program is holding this file open so I cannot delete it. Type a file or directory name into its find box and it tells you the process and the handle.
The display is two panes. The top shows active processes as a tree with their parent relationships, so you can see what launched what. The bottom shows either the handles a selected process has open, or the DLLs and memory-mapped files it has loaded. It also verifies image signatures and can submit files to VirusTotal, which makes it a quick first look at something suspicious.
It is a Microsoft Sysinternals tool written by Mark Russinovich, distributed as a ZIP with no installation, and can even be run straight from Sysinternals Live.
Strengths
- Finds which process has a particular file or directory open
- Process tree shows parent and child relationships, not just a flat list
- Shows open handles and loaded DLLs for any selected process
- No installation; a 3.5 MB ZIP, or run it directly from Sysinternals Live
Limitations
- Windows only
- Closed source, though published by Microsoft
- The amount of detail is overwhelming without some Windows internals knowledge
- Replacing Task Manager with it is a setting people forget they changed
Details
- Pricing
- Free · Free to download and use, published by Microsoft as part of the Sysinternals suite. The source is not published.
- License
- Proprietary
- Developer
- Microsoft Sysinternals
- Platforms
- Windows
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Finding out what a Windows process is really doing, or what is locking a file
- Categories
- System monitoring
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (System Monitor); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 3 sources on file.