Process Hacker Forums

Hi,
I use the filter field (Ctrl+K) all the time and it's great. That said I have a couple of ideas for enhancements that I think will make it better for active monitoring:

• It would be nice to have the option to display in the status bar the "line count" (couldn't think of a better name) for the current tab. So if for example I searched for chrome and I have 20 instances running then I will see line count = 20 in the processes tab and if it has a 100 connections open, I'll see line count = 100 in the network tab.
• Add support for multiple search terms. This is useful when you want to monitor several processes at the same time. For example if you want to monitor chrome and firefox, you could enter "chrome;firefox".
• Add support for regex so you will have more fine grained control on what results are returned. I suggest that this will be controlled some how (maybe checkbox), so that users can still use the simple filter terms without needing to escape special regex literals etc.

Looking forward to hearing what you think.

Any thoughts?

Eran wrote:

It would be nice to have the option to display in the status bar the "line count" (couldn't think of a better name) for the current tab. So if for example I searched for chrome and I have 20 instances running then I will see line count = 20 in the processes tab and if it has a 100 connections open, I'll see line count = 100 in the network tab.

Something like this? (It's hacky and might only be made available as a patch)

Eran wrote:

Add support for multiple search terms. This is useful when you want to monitor several processes at the same time. For example if you want to monitor chrome and firefox, you could enter "chrome;firefox".

Use a space instead of the semicolon for example "chrome firefox"

I've updated the Search commands reference with some examples of multiple queries: http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/fo ... 3563#p3563

Eran wrote:

Add support for regex so you will have more fine grained control on what results are returned. I suggest that this will be controlled some how (maybe checkbox), so that users can still use the simple filter terms without needing to escape special regex literals etc.

I'll look into this...

dmex wrote:

Eran wrote:

It would be nice to have the option to display in the status bar the "line count" (couldn't think of a better name) for the current tab. So if for example I searched for chrome and I have 20 instances running then I will see line count = 20 in the processes tab and if it has a 100 connections open, I'll see line count = 100 in the network tab.

Something like this? (It's hacky and might only be made available as a patch)

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Showing the number of visible processes/services/connections according to the current tab
What's hacky about it? I'm not familiar with the code, but isn't there a simple way to count the visible items in the code that decides which lines to show?
By the way the count is off by one in both pictures. In the first picture have 11 visible processes and not 10 like listed. In the second picture it's 18 instead of 17.

dmex wrote:

Eran wrote:

Add support for multiple search terms. This is useful when you want to monitor several processes at the same time. For example if you want to monitor chrome and firefox, you could enter "chrome;firefox".

Use a space instead of the semicolon for example "chrome firefox"

I've updated the Search commands reference with some examples of multiple queries: http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/fo ... 3563#p3563

Cool!
I tried it now and I noticed that you can enter up to 24 characters in the search field. For one process that should be enough, but for several processes, it might be too limiting (e.g. imagine you want to monitor 5 pids and each is 5 digits, you already went over the maximum length). Is there a reason that the limit is needed? If the limit is needed (e.g. for some performance issue), is it possible to add the option to increase it?

dmex wrote:

Eran wrote:

Add support for regex so you will have more fine grained control on what results are returned. I suggest that this will be controlled some how (maybe checkbox), so that users can still use the simple filter terms without needing to escape special regex literals etc.

I'll look into this...

Great.

Thanks dmex!

dmex wrote:

Use a space instead of the semicolon for example "chrome firefox"

what if you need to search for process name "a s d f g e.exe"?

TETYYS wrote:

dmex wrote:

Use a space instead of the semicolon for example "chrome firefox"

what if you need to search for process name "a s d f g e.exe"?

That's a good point. The separator should probably be a character that is not allowed in file names, so semicolon is also not a good alternative (although I doubt there are alot of processes using it in their name). Maybe we can use the pipe character (e.g. chrome|firefox)? Another option might be to use double quotes to enclose each term (e.g. "chrome" "firefox").

I've changed the split character to | instead of space (also includes a bunch of changes since the last PH release)...

EDIT: Remove download as the changes are now included in v2.34 and above

dmex wrote:

I've changed the split character to | instead of space (also includes a bunch of changes since the last PH release)...
Try this version:

I tried it out and it works as described!
It seems that you also removed the 24 characters limit.
Thanks dmex

Is there any progress about the "Visible" field that tells you how many processes/servers/connections match your search criteria (the one you demonstrated in your first comment)?

looking forward to the "Visible" field.
a "Selected" field would be nice as well (list number of selected items, e.g. if pressed CTRL+A, Selected value equals visible value).

also, it would be helpful if you listed relevant tab's items count instead of just processes count, or otherwise list all 4 (processes/services/network/disk).

keep up the great work, thanks!

Eran wrote:

What's hacky about it?

wj32 fixed those issues

Eran wrote:

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Showing the number of visible processes/services/connections according to the current tab

This was committed in r5985
EDIT: Removed downloads.

dmex, I tried the 64 bit plugin you uploaded and it didn't work.
When I opened Process Hacker I got the following message:
---------------------------
Process Hacker
---------------------------
Unable to load ToolStatus.dll: The specified procedure could not be found.

Do you want to disable the plugin?
---------------------------
Yes No
---------------------------

I'm using the latest release: v2.35 (r5898) on Windows 8.1.
Should I use an older release?

Eran wrote:

I'm using the latest release: v2.35 (r5898) on Windows 8.1.
Should I use an older release?

There was a breaking change between 2.35 and the current 2.36 on SVN... You might have to wait until v2.36 is released

What's the breaking change?

EDIT: Never mind, figured it out.

You can try using the dev builds: http://wj32.org/wp/software/process-hacker/

wj32 wrote:

What's the breaking change?

EDIT: Never mind, figured it out.

You will need to use the dev build of Process Hacker from the above link... Try this version:

Thanks dmex and wj32, it works!

That said, I did notice high cpu usage with the dev version (64 bit version). Every refresh cycle, the cpu usage of services.exe jumps from ~0% to ~12% and comes back again (in the previous version it was between 2%-4% most of the time). The refresh interval I'm using is below normal (2s).
It seems to be unrelated to the ToolStatus plugin (I disabled it and restarted and got the same cpu usage).
I'm using Windows 8.1 64 bit, my CPU is Intel i7-4500U (it's a ThinkPad) and I have 8GB RAM.
Let me know if you need any other info.

Do you have antivirus software installed?

Yes, I'm using Kaspersky Endpoint Security version 10.2.1.23.
The antivirus was running also with the previous version but it didn't seem to cause any issue.

Try re-downloading the dev build, and then set EnableServiceNonPoll to 1 in settings.xml (see http://wj32.org/processhacker/forums/vi ... ?f=6&t=149). Does that fix it?

I tried the new dev build before changing the flag and it brought it down to ~2%.
Enabling the flag brought it down to ~1%.
In both cases services.exe used less cpu than it used to with previous versions.
Does that make sense?

That seems OK. Ideally services.exe should have zero CPU usage when EnableServiceNonPoll is set to 1. So maybe other software on your computer is querying services? Antivirus software could potentially do that.

(Speaking of antivirus, I highly recommend not using antivirus software, especially on x64.)