NoVirusThanks Process Lister

The need for an overview of all running processes has existed since the launch of modern operating systems and certainly Windows has tried to cover this necessity through its own utility called Task Manager. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Task Manager isn't able to provide anything other than basic information and features.

Over the years, software developers have tried time and time again to create better alternatives, offering various other useful functions or information. NoVirusThanks Process Lister is another app that not only promises, as the name suggests, to list all your running processes, but also includes some interesting features you surely will not find in other similar programs.

This utility is available in a small package without any additional requirements, so the download and execution process should be smooth sailing for any user. Considering its name, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that running the app will display a window composed of only two elements: a menu bar and, of course, a list of all running processes.

Although, keep in mind, this feature's advantage is also its major downside: there's no tree/hierarchy view, so finding a parent process will not be an easy task. The columns are not sortable, so even if you know its full path, searching for a specific item can be very difficult. New items, on the other hand, are easy to spot, since they're always placed at the bottom of the list.

NoVirusThanks Process Lister doesn't shy away from including all the possible information for each process. Right from the beginning, most users will probably notice that the list has a unusual number of columns. For each process in the list, users can view its PID and parent PID, uptime, version, user/domain, company, signer, description, but also whether it's a 32/64-bit, system, protected, critical or Metro process.

If you think that's a lot of information, this nifty tool still has a few surprises in store. Right-clicking an item in the list opens the contextual menu where - along some basic/mandatory functions, like terminate/restart process or open containing folder - experienced users will probably be pleasantly surprised by the app's ability to display the process hash, modules, windows and handles, but also inject modules. Nonetheless, the option to verify signatures or check the file hash on VirusTotal would have been very appreciated by users concerned with the validity of their files.

From the program's menu bar you'll be able to access several tools - more or less related to the app's main purpose and functionality - but, other than that, the complete lack of software customization becomes yet again obvious. There's no way to control the update interval, number of instances, how items are listed, which columns should be visible and so on.

In conclusion, NoVirusThanks Process Lister's functionality was a pleasant surprise, providing both mandatory, useful information and additional, new tools clearly targeted at advanced Windows users, but the software's omission to offer any (customization) settings leaves a dent that is hard to ignore.