Process History

Process History is a lightweight Windows tool that monitors your computer and records the runtime of your processes to generate a graphical report. This way, you can find out the exact processes that get started whenever you use a specific application.

This is a portable product so installation isn't necessary. You can save the utility to a USB flash drive and directly launch it on any PC. Settings are remembered on exit.

Also, there are no software requirements involved, like .NET Framework. However, it's a good idea to run the tool with administrative rights to avoid any reading access errors.

The interface of Process History is user-friendly, made from one window with a simplistic appearance, where you can start the query with one click. All processes are monitored and, by default, the activity of all of them is displayed in this list.

However, you can indicate the executable file of a particular process in order to filter data. The graph is color-coded, so you can check out the start and stop time, along with the full file path to the process in question.

You can visit the containing folder of a process from the right-click menu, run the selected application, go to the start and end recording time of the process, as well as view detailed information on the bottom side of the window, such as PC user, process path, command line, operating system, and architecture type of the executable file.

We haven't encountered any compatibility issues with Windows 10. The application successfully captured the runtime activity of processes and had minimal impact on the computer's performance.

On the downside, it's not possible to zoom into the graph to get a better view, nor to increase the font size of the detailed process info. Although it's a relatively simple tool, Process History is not exactly intuitive. The buttons don't have tooltips with descriptions and their purpose becomes clear only by reading the status bar after clicking them. Reports cannot be copied or saved to file.