Scanning for Processes using KillProcess

Many of you might have seen and are already using the scanning feature of KillProcess, but for the rest of you I will try to explain in more detail how this works.

The intention with the scanning functionality in KillProcess is to make it possible to prevent unwanted processes from executing. Why is this useful, why not just remove the process from the computer instead of preventing the execution?

Well there are many reasons for scanning for a process, these are some of them:

• You want to prevent the anti-virus process from scanning your computer at inconvenient times (like when you are actually using the computer or when you have something CPU intensive that needs to be done ).
• You want to prevent the system administrator from installing updates on your computer (for the same reasons as for the previous one) using an remote scripting service.
• You want to prevent some unwanted background processes from running while you are playing computer game.

In the cases listed above you might not have proper privileges to remove an unwanted process, or like in the case of an anti-virus application, you probably want to keep the application on the PC to be able to run it when you feel/need to.

To enable the process scanning feature in KillProcess do the following:

Make sure to enable the scanning feature in KillProcess:

1. Open the application settings; Tools -> Preferences...
2. Select the "Advanced" tab
3. Make sure that the "Enable Process Scanning" checkbox is checked
4. Make sure that the Scanning Interval is set to the appropriate level.
5. Click "OK"

Next, lets enable scanning of a process:

1. Add a process to the current/new Kill List. This can be done either by
   •  right-clicking on the process in the running process list and selecting "Add to List" 
   • by typing the name of the process in the Kill List Editor editbox 
   • by browsing for the process on the computer hard-drive from the Kill List Editor
2. Next, in the Kill List Editor, select the process and check the "Scan for Process" checkbox.
3. (Also Make sure that the "Enabled" checkbox is properly checked - otherwise nothing will happen)
4. Click "OK"

The process that you have selected for scanning will be terminated the next time that it occurs in the running processes list. This means that if there already was a instance of the scanned process in the running processes list when you added it to the list, it will still be there. It will however have a green checkbox identifying it as a process on the current Kill List, but it will not be terminated until the next time you execute the list, or manually kill the process.

So there you are. Good luck with KillProcess!

Best Regards
/ Roger Persson