Virus Scan for eXtended Task Manager

Fletch So if I'm running Win7 x64 I must by the Enterprise version?

Oct 7 2010 at 3:03pm Copy Link

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Michael Ritter No. EXtended Task Manager (64-bit Home Edition) also available.

Warecase - Oct 8 2010 at 1:17am Copy Link

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Fletch Ok. From http://www.warecase.com/purchase.asp it looked like Home was not offered for 'sale' in 64-bit.

Allot of the tool encompasses what SysInternals already does. Can you elaborate on what your tool adds or otherwise differentiate the two?

Oct 8 2010 at 2:30am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter eXtended Task Manager (64-bit Home Edition) will be offered via current promotion on BitsDuJour.

Warecase - Oct 8 2010 at 2:43am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter The Warecase eXtended Task Manager (XTM) is a powerful auxiliary tool designed for simplifying the environment of the software developer. XTM can give fast solutions for sudden problems which may arise in a product's functioning without having to either reinstall it from the user workstation or even without needing to close the application. Debugging and improving application development. A rich workstation investigation tool. White box testing sessions for the QA department. Investigation tool for integration possibilities. Accelerating application support process. And much more...

Warecase - Oct 8 2010 at 2:47am Copy Link

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Ron K I have the same question as Ron. I'd never heard of XTM before, and it looks very nice. But it seems to cover a lot of the same ground as the free apps by Sysinternals and Nir Sofer. Do you have a quick list of what makes XTM better?

Oct 10 2010 at 5:29am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter The program does too much to describe. But it is small and very fast so it takes just 2-3 minutes to install. You will see what it does in seconds. Many useful features. Professional and efficient. Worth to try.

Warecase - Oct 10 2010 at 6:23am Copy Link

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Glen Petrant When I go through the ordering process, the discount doesn't show even on the order confirmation page. What gives?

Oct 10 2010 at 7:32am Copy Link

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Glen Petrant Problem solved. Thank you.

Oct 10 2010 at 9:10am Copy Link

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S B I cannot find the EULA. Can I use one license of XTM for both my desktop and laptop if XTM is not used simultaneously?

Oct 10 2010 at 12:12pm Copy Link

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Fletch http://www.warecase.com/purchase.asp

"Warecase XTM is licensed on a per-computer basis. This means that you must purchase a license for each separate computer."

Oct 10 2010 at 5:45pm Copy Link

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Staley Sorry if this was brought up... but how does this product differ from the free Process Explorer from Microsoft's SysInternals written by one of Microsoft's Technical Fellows Mark Russinovich?

For comparison and reference, this is the "product's" homepage...
http://technet.microsoft....s/bb896653

Mar 23 2011 at 1:29am Copy Link

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Lupke Brother @ Michael Ritter
This deal is coming soon. The last time this deal was on BDJ you did not answer all question, i.e. from Ronald King and Staley. There are so many freeware task managers available, I can name at least 10 good products. So instead of saying that XTM does too much to descibe, I hope you can and will answer the question this time. We can all test and see XTM does a good job, but if you have to describe why we should buy this instead of all the other free task managers, well please summarize why you think your product is worth the money, what does xtm do that others don't et cetera.

Aug 1 2011 at 8:26am Copy Link

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Pedro Laurent Well while trying the software I realize that this software is not target for the average joe as there is features useless for a user that doesn't know what is a process modules, process handles, critical sections, COM+ components, process statistics, environment variables and so on... So asking the developer what are the advantages his software has is like putting him on the spot to get bombarded with questions after questions with features others similar and free task managers have. I am planning on buying a license when the discount is available because I like some features it has but one particular thing which I think is essential and missing is to show non responsive applications if the function is present it's hidden some where cause I couldn't find it in any of the options it has.

Aug 3 2011 at 11:59am Copy Link

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Gonzo I've been waiting for this for quite some time... thanks BDJ and Warecase!
Now I hope the dev will be more responsive than I've been reading...

Aug 3 2011 at 3:54pm Copy Link

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S B I agree with Pedro Laurent about all the possible questions, but like Lupke Brother, I think that promotions are *supposed* to put vendors on the spot, and that this Conversation is intended for questions--and comments--thanks, guys!

Certainly any vendor, *especially* a software developer can speak knowledgably and intelligently about why her/his product is different from the competition!

I'm interested in the eXtended Task Manager--and I'm all ears!

Aug 3 2011 at 7:02pm Copy Link

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Lupke Brother @ S B and Pedro,

I completely agree with both of you. Question after question was not my intention. Of course I know what this software can do (and not). But if a vendor really believes in his product he should explain to us why, even if there are stupid question, trial versions and so on. It's allso a chance for people who are now the average Joe to get to know other software like XTM. They will not be the average Joe in the future if they can rely on critical comments and well thought reviews about products. So, let's wait for the vendor to put himself and more important his XTM product on the spot. No hard feelings, case closed :-)

Aug 3 2011 at 11:25pm Copy Link

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Abe P Are the 32-bit and 64-bit versions separate products, or does one license allow me to install them both (on a one computer, dual boot to 32-bit or 64-bit)?

Aug 5 2011 at 1:43am Copy Link

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Avi S OK, I have purchased the product. I haven't yet done a full comparison with Process Explorer, but just from 5 minutes of usage it is clear that the program has many options that Process Explorer does not.
For instance:
1] The columns options for each process include not only general items like "handle count", but also allows tracking of specific object types like "bitmap count", "region count", "fonts count", etc. Although in process explorer you can get this information by requesting a list of objects and looking through it, PE does not have any option (at least in the version I'm using) to obtain a comprehensive tabular overview of such information, which can be very useful for debugging.
2] Virtually everything that can be displayed in a column can also be displayed as a delta - threads, GDI objects, even "bitmap count". Overall, I'm not sure how useful this is; for the usual case one only needs deltas only for context switchs and i/o accesses, which PE does provide, but it is nice to have the option (if anyone has an idea of a specific case in which these other deltas would be useful, please share).
3] Finally - and this is so far the main feature that made the purchase worthwhile - it has a "pin" feature to identify a group of processes that should be pinned to the top. With PE, if one is interested in one specific process, that's fine - just search alphabetically. But what if you need to watch a group of say, five specific processes? It can be maddening to keep traversing the tree up and down to find them. With XTM, a single click on a process gives it "pin" status, and then a single click on the "pin" column brings all those "pinned" processes to the top of the chart, so that you can easily follow and compare all of their stats.
To the XTM guys: as I said, it's worth it just for this. But this feature would be SO MUCH MORE useful if I would be able to provide a secondary sorting. That is: first order of sorting should put my pinned items on top, but I also want a second order of sorting to sort the rest of the processes in terms of, say, context switch delta, so I can see if anything else problematic is cropping up. Also, within the "pin" feature, I'd like to be able to set "pin" values - that is, to set pin#1, pin#2, pin#3, etc.

Highly recommended.

Aug 5 2011 at 2:40am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter The 32-bit and 64-bit versions are separate products. Warecase XTM is licensed on a per-computer basis. This means that you must purchase a license for each separate computer.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 3:08am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter Avi: Thank you for comparison and nice comments about XTM features.
One of XTM features is 'Instant Search' & 'Process Filters'.
Process Filters filters for the Process View are applied directly. Once the filter is specified, this view displays the information according to the selected criteria. To define the filtering criteria, open the Filters form by selecting the 'Set Filters' menu item from the XTM main 'Options' menu. This form has three different groups of filters, combined by an OR logic operator.
A 'Instant Search' feature that provides search results quickly with word highlighting as you type. Instant Search helps you to quickly find items in the process/process details view. The Instant Search box is always available in all of your views.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 3:14am Copy Link

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Gonzo I must admit the licensing model (along with the steep price) sucks for home license... I mean: many (if not most) people have more than 1 computer at home... Also, what if I buy the 32 bit version today, then upgrade my PC to a 64 bit compatible tomorrow?
I think Warecase should analyze the Home licensing model and come up with something more..."home"-friendly.

Other than that, I think the app itself is great, and I really appreciate seeing it here with such a nice discount :)

Aug 5 2011 at 3:15am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter Instant Search
The following table shows examples of searches you might find useful. The search query syntax, follows this basic form:
column:your search criteria value.
For example, module:ntdll
You can also use logical operator -(NOT) and so forth to refine your search, and these are noted in the table. Please see XTM help for more details.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 3:16am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter Gonzo: Thank you.
Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 3:35am Copy Link

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Lupke Brother @ Avi S
Thank you for your useful comment! The pin function was an eye opener for me.

About Delta function: correct me if I’m wrong, I did not test and maybe I understand it in another way than the manual describes. The XTM manual calls it Active Count: “The delta between this field and the value of (RecursionCount -1) indicates how many additional threads are waiting to acquire the critical section. (Sometimes named LockCount)”. So I think it is usefull with critical sections, where more than one thread at a time is prohibited from executing a particular section of code. If multiple threads are blocked on a critical section, only one thread acquires the critical section when another thread releases it. So when you need to track down multithreading performance issues in your code it is useful in finding deadlocks and performance problems. And there are a lot of multithreaded programs these days! I think you can try to determine how you got into the current state by just showing the current state?

Maybe Micahel Ritter can respond to this and you're question about other Delta's?
?
Buy the way. No changelog available for the last two so called ‘maintenance releases’. Just a version update to sell better on BDJ or are there really some important changes which you can mention in a cangelog for us. This is a bit vague.

.

Aug 5 2011 at 3:39am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter Lupke Brother: The Process Locks view toolbar contain
'Show Unlocked objects' button. Pressing this button -
Enable/disable display of unlocked lock objects in the Locks View.
Maintenance releases contain minor bug fixes and improved performance.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 4:29am Copy Link

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Avi S @ Lupke Brother - that would actually be useful! Unfortunately, that is clearly not what is going on. The threads delta is virtually always zero for all my processes, even those with many wait-state threads - indicating that it really is a count of how many new threads are created.
On the other hand, the thread panel at the bottom does show a very nice table of threads for the selected process, with columns for "state" and "wait reason". This info is available in PE, of course, but one has to click on each thread separately to get it. The tabular view here is definitely an improvement. And these tabular views have the pin feature, too.
@ Michael Ritter - as far as I can tell, no matter what I do, if I am sorting by "pin", then the secondary sorting is "running time" - a very odd choice indeed! At the least, it should be "process name" by default. But as I use XTM more, I see that the pin feature desperately needs an option to define the secondary sort criterion.
Also, Michael Ritter, please answer @Gonzo about the upgrade to 64 bit. When I one day acquire a 64-bit machine, is there an automatic upgrade, or must I buy a whole new license ?!

Aug 5 2011 at 4:34am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter @ Avi S
Then you type * into 'Instant Search' box items that contain the ''pin" are displayed in the view pane are highlighted. Now you can use secondary sort criterion.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 4:51am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter @Gonzo
About the upgrade to 64 bit:
Registered users of previous versions of Warecase XTM are always eligible to upgrade at 40% off new license prices.
32-bit license can cost-free transferred to 64-bit license.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 5:05am Copy Link

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Avi S Thank you to Michael Ritter for alerting me to the instant search and filter features. Here is my survey of these features:
1] Instant search. Overall - an awesome feature. In this day and age instant incremental search is where it's at. Comparing to PE, it's like the difference between voidtool's everything versus AgentRansack's file search. In PE you have to open the find dialog and type something. Here, you just start typing. It's the way it should be.
A few notes:
1a] The instant search is actually a filter - everything that doesn't match is removed from the view. I like it.
1b] The instant search can match only the process name, or anything, or a specific field. This flexibility is very impressive. For instance, to see all items with an i/o read delta of zero: "I/OReadsDelta:0".
However, there is a problem here: this last item will find all those lines in which I/O Reads Delta has a "0" *anywhere* in the column - that is, it will also find 250, 60, and 506.
I believe that to make this feature really useful, we need to have the option of real numeric comparison. That is, I want to say: "I/OReadsDelta0" or "I/OReadsDelta200" or "I/OReadsDelta=0".
So, Michael Ritter, please let us know whether this is a feature that can be implemented in the near future: using "", "" and "=" operators to match the numeric value of a column.
1c] They do offer a NOT operator (e.g. to get rid of all those pesky svchost lines, write "-svchost" in the instant search). However, the NOT operator did not seem to work with the field specifier: ("-I/OReadsDelta:0" still left all the zero lines there.)
1d] Another very important feature (@Michael Ritter) would be to allow regular expressions in the search terms. Most power-user tools do this (like voidtool's everything). And virtually all development libraries already include a regular expression engine (thus in .NET, for instance), so it would not require writing any regex logic, but rather just using the regex functions to perform the comparison if the user ticks the "use regex" box. XTM is a serious power user tool, and deserves to have regex support.
1e] The instant search bar is there in the secondary screens, too, so one can similarly do an instant filter over the thread list to see only waiting threads. Very nice.

2] Filters
Michael Ritter also mentioned the filters, that can be configured separately. However, here, disappointingly, there is no option to relate to any of the other fields (other than process name).
In any case, the very efficient filters interface can be used to very quickly build a list of processes to watch exclusively: click the "add filter" button on each of the desired processes, then click the "filter" button, and instantly the screen is limited to only those processes (that is, to processes of those names - as opposed to those specific instances)

@Michael Ritter - I now understand why you suggested I look at filters and instant search. These let me limit my process list in one way, and then I can sort the columns in another way. But this doesn't really solve my specific problem, because my main issue is that I want to on the one hand focus upon the items that have the primary load, but at the same time I also want to have the rest sorted by context switch deltas or CPU time, so that I can keep my eye on anything else suspicious.

Overall, though, I really do love the instant search feature, and I'm glad to have purchased the product.

Aug 5 2011 at 5:06am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter @ Avi SThank you for all of your comments. Instant search doesn't support numeric comparison like " ". Although, it support exact phrase & negative comparison.1b] Use of double quotes so that the search results match the exact phrase within the quotes. For example: I/OReadsDelta:"0"1c] Use logical operator -(NOT) and so forth to refine your search. For example: I/OReads:-"0". Please see XTM help 'Instant search' for more details.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 5:34am Copy Link

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Avi S @Michael Ritter: Your clarifications are very useful. Thank you.
However, another issue has come up. I've been running XTM now for nearly four hours (as XTM itself reports), and I'm getting concerned about the resource usage of the product. According the XTM's reports, XTM.exe is using 8,851 GDI object - this seems like a clear resource leak - it's hard to imagine a justification for so many thousands of GDI objects for a single screen of tabular data. Perhaps more confusing is that when I go to the GDI tab to see what these object are, it shows only a list of only 34 GDI objects. So what are these other 8,816 objects? (Windows task manager verifies the count of 8,851 GDI object).
Other resource counts that might be unwarranted: (a) XTM.exe lists itself as taking 3,075 user objects. (b) The context switch delta for XTM while it is running is about 4000 per second, and while it is in the background: about 1000 per second.
To summarize:
1] My main worry is the GDI object leak. With a leak like this (between the time I started writing and now it went up to 9,046), XTM.exe cannot be run for very long until it brings a system to a standstill. Please assure us that this will be correct immediately with a maintenance release.
My other questions here are:
2] Why are these GDI objects not listed on the GDI object pane?
3] 3,075 user objects also seems too much. Certainly more than anything else on my system, including MS Office, MS Visual Studio, Foxit Reader, and much more. Is this really necessary?
4] Finally, the context switch delta also seems too high. The updating of values is presented only once per two seconds. So why is it necessary to wait and then resume execution thousands of times per second? These context switches cost us serious amounts of processor time. My main worry regarding the background usage. When it's in the foreground, fine. But when I'm using other programs I want to still leave XTM running, but when it's in the background it shouldn't be updating thousands of times per second!! Rather, it should simply wait until I get back to it, or possibly keep things updated with a once-per-second check, but not more than that! (Other readers of the forum: do you also agree that this is unreasonable??)
Again, I love this product - that's why I'm spending so much time understanding its features - but I want to be sure that the development staff is committed to solving these performance issues.

Aug 5 2011 at 6:00am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter @ Avi S
Please make sure that you have the latest build: 2.12.1851.

It is always nice to read such things about the job we do.
We really appreciate your opinion! I have forwarded your request to our R&D department to be included in the next versions.
We appreciate any feedback from users concerning our products.
We are regularly updating our products and incorporating additional features and functions to better service our customer base and meet their changing requirements.
XTM team would like to thanks you for choosing XTM as your desktop task monitoring and management application.
Thanks a lot!

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 6:50am Copy Link

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Avi S @Michael Ritter: I have build 2.10.1755.0 - This is what I was provided with today when I purchased the product. How do I obtain the latest release?

Aug 5 2011 at 6:53am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter @ Avi S: Please download latest version 2.12 version.
You can download it from here:
http://www.warecase.com/downloads.asp
This performance problem was fixed in 2.11 version.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 7:01am Copy Link

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Lupke Brother @ Avi S,

Is the GDI object resource leak solved after installing the new version at your place? I compared with normal windows task manager and the values at my place look the same, so it seems solved in this release (and that's worth mentioning in the changelog!)

I agree about the context switch delta. Open XTM = work for us, close XTM = sleepy time :-)

Aug 5 2011 at 8:59am Copy Link

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Avi S Hi - yes, version 2.12 solves the GDI problem
Although it still seems strange to me that the GDI tab displays far fewer resources than the GDI count. Michael - can you explain how that works please?

Aug 5 2011 at 9:23am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter The GDI tab displays far fewer resources than the GDI count, because GDI tab displays only queried resources, although GDI count show windows statistic value like a regular windows task manager.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 9:34am Copy Link

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Michael Ritter @Lupke Brother, @Avi S
About the context switch delta. You can decrease XTM context switch delta by moving XTM to system tray(background mode). Go to main menu - options - select 'system tray' and click on window minimize button.

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 9:50am Copy Link

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Allan Winston I bought the product today via Bitsdujour. I am intriqued by the help file describing Debug Process: "Allows user to attach the selected process to the default debugging tool for debugging. This option is valid only in workstations where this environment has been installed".

Would this allow extra functionality for programs that i have compiled under the Microsoft Express Edition compilers? If so, what are the mechanics of doing so?

Aug 5 2011 at 12:35pm Copy Link

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Michael Ritter Warecase XTM use Microsoft Windows Automatic Debugging technique to attach the selected process to the default debugging tool.

Please see following for more information:
Configuring Automatic Debugging for Application Crashes
http://msdn.microsoft.com...S.85).aspx

Warecase - Aug 5 2011 at 12:47pm Copy Link

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Lupke Brother Finally bought it. Thanks for all the comments guys. Great tool.

Aug 5 2011 at 3:03pm Copy Link

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James Kenney Just bought it, installed it, and entered the licence code.
It said it accepted it and that it was registred.
Checked help/about. Everything good.
Shut it down.
Every time I start it up, it saies it has 30 days left and I have to activate it again???

Aug 5 2011 at 3:41pm Copy Link

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Gonzo @James Kenney
Are you using Windows Vista / 7?
If so and based in my own experience with other apps (I have yet to install and register XTM), the UAC makes it tricky to register apps.
Sometimes you can start the app regularly, register it and everything's ok. Sometimes, if you installed the app by right click Run as administrator, then you have to start it the same way, register it, and then it'll take it. You may even have to start it this way every time for it to take the registration details

Try starting the app with right clickRun as administrator (yes, even if your WIndows user account has administrator privileges), then register the app, quit it and restart it.

Hope this helps.

Aug 5 2011 at 4:19pm Copy Link

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James Kenney Thanks Gonzo... run as admin and then reg worked.
Now I can run it either way and it works
BTW. It seems that when you buy this and download it from the link they give you in the e-mail, that you get the 64-bit(in my case) enterprise edition rather than the home edition!

Aug 5 2011 at 4:31pm Copy Link

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