14 DAY TRIAL // Even with the top-notch, multiple core CPUs, the performance of your computer depends on other resources and how these are managed. Fundamental for faster startups and for the stability of your computer are the processes running in the background. What you see on the screen of your monitor dressed up in funky interfaces is just a very small part of what your computer resources are spent on.
I am sure that you are familiar with Windows Task Manager, a very useful tool when it comes to handling all the processes and services running on your computer. It allows a trimming of the processor list as well as changing the priority to the processors. Setting a High priority will cause the CPU to discriminate all the other processes and treat that one preferentially.
Up until the release of Vista, Task Manager was a tool for medium and advanced users as a beginner could not make anything of the band of svchost, lsass and all the other processes that rang absolutely no bells. There was nothing to describe the process and the application it belonged to. Only a bunch of weird names with jumping up and down numbers attached to them. Starting Vista, Task Manager changed its tactics and now it displays a brief description for the running processes.
However, it still is incomplete and a third party application is better "trained" to provide you with information on the running processes. The Ultimate Troubleshooter is a valuable tool in this sense and acts as a resource manager by explaining in detail the background processes and disclosing the role of the services running on your computer.
The interface is quite a gathering of colors, not a fortunate one though. However, its functionality is what matters the most in resource managers and at this chapter TUT comes with a learned lesson. The information is enclosed in four tabs, three of them displaying details on tasks, services, startup elements and the last one deals with information on the entire system. The additional tools included in the application extend its purpose and value as it comes with a set of utilities like TCP/IP Configuration, Name Server Lookup, Ping, Trace Route and Whois.
All the housekeeping is done with these tools while additional options allow you to refresh all the recorded data, print a report or send an email.
The price of the utility reaches $29 which is a bit steep considering that there are freebies doing almost the same things. The trial period goes as far as ten almost unrestricted uses of the application so an average skilled user should not have too much trouble during the testing.
Tasks tab functions as a regular Task Manager on steroids. All the items found are categorized based on a color code for an easier identification of the malicious elements running on your computer. So red denotes programs deemed bad, yellow indicates that the program is probably harmless but the user may not need it while green is reserved for the absolutely safe processes. Additional blue and white colors refer to processes that could be legitimate (emphasis on "could") and to the unknown processes, respectively. The application makes available email sending for the latter so that it can be verified and introduced in the database for appropriate flagging.
If I were you, I would not bet my life on the accuracy of the labeling of the processes as there may be some false positives. For instance, all the service processes were blue, including Windows Logon and the recommendation for all the services was to leave them alone (and right they are).
The options available for the running processes are the usual ones and you can choose to end the item's activity, suspend it or explore its residence folder. For advanced users, there is the priority setting (with the same levels as in Task Manager), take a look at its dependencies (highly valuable as it displays all the modules used by the process) or jump to Windows Explorer's context menu directly. There are no recommendations or extended additional info on the selected process in the trial version (but you cannot miss the bright yellow window at the bottom of the screen announcing the mischief). The only thing you will have to deal with is the manufacturer's name and description.
Services view follows the exact same principles as the processes. The only difference here is that for some of the services you benefit from a brief description. The context menu of this section however is slightly different. You can select its startup mode, stop them, explore the folder of the program it belongs to, take a look at the dependencies and at its properties.
Managing the items starting up with Windows is a cinch. TUT lets you disable the items or delete the ones you no longer need. Further options let you delete the file it is associated to, launch the startup entry or explore the program's installation folder. For the skilled ones, there is the possibility of exploring the associated registry key and check out its dependencies. Thus, you know exactly what the links with the system files are and also the changes effected in the registry.
But if you want to know everything about your computer, what it is made of, which are its limitations in terms of hardware or what softwares are installed, take a peek into System Info tab. It displays a pretty extensive summary of everything your system is composed of, including full details on the operating system.
A piece of advice, though: do not trust the installation date of the system provided by TUT. As you can see from the corresponding picture below, the application detected as installation date 2-Nov-2006 (time is not important in this case) and the operating system is indicated as Windows Vista Business Edition. Can that really be when Enterprise edition was released on November 30th and all the other editions were available starting January 30th 2007. To tell you the truth, I am not sure of the exact date of the OS installation, but I am sure it was some time in April (the first update of the system was on April 15th, 2007, so it was definitely around that time)
Other than this inconsistency, there was almost no misinformation regarding the system on the test computer. CPU, network adapters, memory, graphic card, all the details about them were displayed correctly. Only in what concerns the updates of Windows there was a bit more blank space, other than this TUT showed all the applications installed on the computer and all the details on other hardware present on the machine.
TUT is filled with useful resources and makes for a very good resource manager. Under the Tools menu, there are shortcuts for the most important utilities of the OS: Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, Event Viewer and Regedit. Additionally, you can create a restore point for the system directly from TUT.
In the right hand upper corner of the interface there are the CPU and Memory histograms showing the resource allocation percentage.
The Good
A very good resource manager, TUT provides significant info on the dependencies of the services and processes running on your computer.
More than that, it also shows details about the entire system. All the elements are included in the report and the most important of them, such as CPU, graphic card or drives come with comprehensive information.
The Bad
The interface needs a little polishing and at least the possibility of customizing the colors on your own.
Testing the application on Windows Vista Basic was a bit disappointing, as processes like Java or Windows updates were flagged as harmful to the system. A restart somehow fixed the problem and only Java Update Scheduler and Cyberlink's Power Cinema were among the harmful items.
The 10-use restriction applied for the trial version may not be sufficient for an average user to fully test the software.
The Truth
All in all, TUT is quite something and offers very rare options. My favorite is showing the dependencies for the active processes and services.
Despite the interface which is not quite the best of choices, I suggest you give it a try and see for yourselves what it has to offer as it will definitely not be a waste of time.
Check out the review on a previous version to become aware of the progress: version 2.74
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
