plugginaway said:
in Task Mgr, Rt click a process and be able to get web based
help/extra info on what it is.
Including all the non-Microsoft programs for which Microsoft has no
documentation?
You do realize that any such web-based lookup help would result in
downloading encylopedias worth of information to describe every
Microsoft process. They would also be more detailed and technical than
the vast majority of users would understand. That's probably what their
MSDN site is for.
There are already web-based lookups for processes. Google on the
process' filename. You'll find several "process definition" web sites
that you could save in your Favorites list.
also to restart it; not just kill it.
The loader for the program may not be the process that continues running
thereafter. An example: you start a game but the file that you run to
start the game will load another program because the first one is part
of their copy protection scheme or it scans for emulated CD/DVD drives
that might attempt to thwart their copy protection. Some programs
require the use of a driver which they load dynamically (instead of at
Windows load time) and it is the driver that does the work, not the
executable that was used to load the driver. A program may start
multiple processes, so which one gets used to reload the program? My
anti-virus software starts 4 processes (that I know of), Windows
Defender starts 2, IE8 starts 2 or more, my backup program starts 3,
svchost.exe rolls up *several* programs under 1 process plus there are
multiple instances of svchost.exe into which multiple services have been
rolled together.
Same in msconfig.
or at least cutandpasteable.
You do realize that you are asking in a Windows XP newsgroup yet that
product isn't going to experience any major (and possibly no minor)
changes since the release of Windows Vista and the coming release of
Windows 7, right? Mainstream support for Windows XP died last April.
Extended support will probably incur security updates until it ends in
another 5 years. See
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223.
