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What is ProBalance? Also known as 'Process Balance', it is a way to dynamically adjust the priority of running processes so that badly behaved programs do not degrade system responsiveness. More info...


Example: Process Lasso's ProBalance improves system responsiveness (green) during a high load via process priority optimization.

What are the differences between the Free and Pro builds?

Available in English, Japanese, German, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese/Brazilian (out of date), Russian, Italian, Spanish (out of date), Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Dutch (out of date), and Serbian!

Process Lasso Automatically optimize your processes, cores, and power consumption!
For Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 2008/R2, Vista, and Windows 7 or 8!
Now with Energy Saver! [screenshot]

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Process Lasso is NOT yet another task manager. It is a process priority optimization and system automation utility. Priority optimization, affinity optimization, core optimization, automated rules, automated power schemes, you name it and Process Lasso has it. Although most consider Lasso the ultimate process priority optimizer, it does so much more!

Process Lasso's most popular feature is the unique process optimization technology called ProBalance (Process Balance) that will improve your PC's responsiveness and stability through process priority optimization and/or CPU affinity adjustments. Windows, by design, allows programs to monopolize your CPU without sufficient restraint -- leading to hangs, micro-lags, and delays in your keystroke or mouse actions. ProBalance intelligently adjusts the priorities and/or CPU affinities of running programs, on-demand, as-needed so that badly behaved processes won't negatively impact the responsiveness of your PC.

Don't just take our word on ProBalance, try our graphical CPU Eater to see the benefit for your own PC. This is a simple 'CPU Eater' running at normal priority, something any programmer can easily recreate in any language. How many threads running at normal priority, doing nothing other than consuming CPU cycles, do you think it would take to bring your PC to its knees? On a single core system it takes merely one thread at normal priority! Yes, it would almost seem like a bug in Windows, but it is by design, an explanation we also give in the above link.

In addition to ProBalance, there are countless features allowing the user to take full automated control of the processes on their PC. You can have a wide range operations performed, or settings applied, each time a process is run. Core optimization technologies allow you to choose on what CPUs/cores a process should run, as well as what their CPU priority class and I/O priority class should be. You can also disallow certain processes from running, log all processes run, and even set various other process rules. These rules, along with many others, include automatically restarting or terminating a process after it reaches some CPU or memory threshold. For license enforcement, you can limit the number of instances of a process that can be running. A gaming mode allows for easy process priority optimization for avid gamers.

We must not leave out our power scheme automation capabilities. These allow you to associate specific power schemes with particular processes on your PC. So, when you start a resource intensive process, you can enter High Performance power mode (for example). When it terminates, the previous power scheme is restored. We are adding new power scheme (aka power profile) automation capabilities all the time.

Version 5 adds many features, including I/O Priorities (default and current), Default Power Schemes, HyperThreaded Core Avoidance, Automated Updates, and much more. We even offer lifetime licenses for a very small surcharge, so you never have to worry about paying for another upgrade again.

  • Process Priority and Affinity Optimization
    Automatically balance process priorities (and/or CPU affinities) in a safe, effective manner to improve PC responsiveness during high loads and prevent system stalls and micro-lags. Our years of experience have resulted in a highly optimal algorithm duplicated nowhere else. We call it ProBalance. For more information and a graphical demonstration to run on your own PC, see this page.
  • Default (sticky) priorities and affinities
    Set sticky CPU or I/O priorities and CPU affinities for your processes, allowing you to tweak the way in which they are executed
  • Multi-Core Optimization
    Through sticky CPU affinities and ProBalance affinity adjustments, you can optimize your multi-core processor to make the most efficient use of your CPUs (cores). It also offers logical core avoidance to improve performance of certain applications on HyperThreaded CPUs.
  • Process Watchdog
    Terminate, restart, or change CPU affinity when a specified threshold is met
  • I/O Priorities
    For Vista and above you can set the current or sticky I/O priority of processes
  • Power Profile Automation
    Automatically switch the power profile to whatever you want when the application(s) you indicate run
  • Energy Saver See screenshot of Energy Saver!
    This new feature allows you to remain in High Performance (or any power profile) until your PC goes idle for X seconds. It then switches to another profile, such as Power Saver or Balanced (your choice of any). This allows you to conserve electricity without compromising performance. It can also be quite useful to extend battery life on mobile devices such as laptops and netbooks.
  • Auto-terminate
    Terminate select processes any time they are found to be running
  • Keep Running (Restart on Crash)
    One can set processes as 'Keep Running', so that they restart if they crash or hang.
  • Instance Count Limits
    Limit processes to a specified number of instances
  • Independent Core Engine
    This core engine (the governor) actually does the work. It can operate in the background as either a normal process *or* as a service, running as a system service or a service in a specific user context. By having only it start, there is no user interface or system tray icon. The GUI can be launched on-demand as needed for configuration changes.
  • System Responsiveness Metric
    Our unique algorithm monitors system responsiveness with amazing accuracy
  • Minimal Resource Use
    NOBODY uses less resources for this type of task than Process Lasso. It is written in native C++ and continually refined for maximum efficiency. A native 64-bit build also available. Private memory usage by the core engine is typically under 1MB! (depends on system)
  • Utilizes new features of Windows Vista/7
    Makes use of latest features of Windows 7, but maintains full backward compatibility to Windows 2000!
  • Hyper-Threaded Core Avoidance
    Avoid these 'fake' cores for maximum performance of some applications.
  • Select Multiple Processes at Once
    Want to terminate 5 different processes at once? Or set their current or sticky priority class or CPU affinity? No problem. Select multiple processes and work with them.
  • So much more...
    Discover for yourself what Process Lasso can do for you! Quick example of one more feature -- the multi-select feature.. That's right, select multiple processes and act on all of them at once!

As an aside, in Windows Vista and Windows 7, adjustments of the process priority class also have an effect on the I/O and SuperFetch memory priorities for that process.

Once you install Process Lasso, it will just start working. More advanced users can tweak the configuration, but you needn't touch anything to have it instantly improve your system responsiveness and prevent stalls in high load situations.

Process Lasso is very useful and effective on even the latest high-end PCs. However, its ProBalance algorithm achieves maximum effect on PCs with relatively little CPU 'power', such as Netbooks, Tablets, and older desktops.

Process Lasso runs on all editions of Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, and Windows 7.

Process Lasso is written in native C++, not .NET. The background core engine that manages processes is completely independent from the graphical user interface, allowing you to keep process rules applied with almost no overhead. With Process Lasso, load time is instant and resource consumption is minimal.

Screenshots

Here are just a FEW of the many screenshots of Process Lasso's abilities.

Graphical Interface Features

  • Basic task manager capabilities for convenience
  • Completely optional, the background core engine can do all the work!
  • Act on *multiple* processes at once
  • Show only active processes, or all processes
  • Displays per-process CPU history (white line on graph drawn when processes selected)
  • Change process settings and rules
  • System tray icon with notifications
  • Extremely low resource use, and sleeps when minimized to tray

Active Processes Window
Process Lasso's background process management engine is completely independent of the GUI. It can run all by itself, silently enforcing process rules and logging process events.

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Reviews / Awards

PL Makes Windows Performance Optimization An Easy Task - MakeUSAOf.com

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4Sysops review of Process Lasso
BrotherSoft Review
BostonPocketPC Review
Softonic editor review of Process Lasso
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"All in all, Process Lasso offers a wide variety of ways to control how running programs are allocated to your CPUs. You choose the priority at which processes should run and on which CPUs they should run. It is simply your all-in-one automatic Windows process tuner!" - Fiber Download Editor Review