Process Lasso Documentation

Main Window

The main window consists of a CPU utilization and system responsiveness graph, a list of running processes, and a list of recent actions (log). The configuration of Process Lasso is made easy to tweak through the menu system. In the main menu you’ll find all the general configuration options. Right-clicking on a process, or multiple processes, shows available operations on those process(es).

 

The Graph

The Process Lasso graph shows a calculation of system responsiveness and overall CPU utilization. The system responsiveness is calculated using a proprietary algorithm that measures the latency in the user interface (windowing) subsystem.

Highlighted portions of the graph indicate that a ProBalance process restraint occurred during that period. This can help you see the impact of Process Lasso on system responsiveness. Note that the highlighted areas of the graph may not be 100% accurate in their timing, but are somewhere very close. As future versions come the accuracy of the highlighted area will improve.

 

Highlighted ProBalance events

During periods when ProBalance takes action to ensure your system repsonsiveness remains high despite a spike in CPU use, the graph will be highlighted. The log can be referenced to see what actions were taken.

New in v4 – Hovering over a highlight even will show you the process(es) adjusted (in priority or CPU affinity) at that time.

CPU history of selected process(es)

With Process Lasso you can see the individual CPU history of process(es) you select in the process list. The CPU utilization history of all processes currently selected (highlighted) in the process list is drawn as a smaller white line on the graph. For example, the user below selected ‘devenv.exe’ and its CPU history was drawn onto the graph as a white line.

 

RAM Load Graph

New in v4 – A new RAM Load graph has been added to the right, even though the RAM load history is indicated on the main graph. This new graph is intended to give you a quick read on the RAM load. You can hide it by simply clicking it, or by using the View menu to toggle its visibility.

 

The All Processes Tab

The Process List shows running processes and allows for easy rule creation. You can right click on any process, or on multiple processes, to get a context menu of available options. Among many other things, the options include setting current priorities and affinities, as well as default priorities and affinities.

 

Single process context menu

The context menu when multiple processes are selected is different than when a single process is selected, since not all operations can be performed on multiple processes.

 

Multiple process context menu

As you can see, with Process Lasso you can select MULTIPLE processes at once and operate on them. Not all functions are available when multiple processes are selected, but most common ones are. This includes process rule creation.

 

Selecting which columns to show

You can select which columns you want visible by right-clicking on the ‘All processes’ tab, right-clicking on the list header, or using the ‘View / Select Process Columns’ menu. In addition, you can resize the columns (at their headers) and change the column ordering by dragging the column headers. These view changes will be remembered by Process Lasso. The same applies for the ‘Active processes’ tab. Note that right-clicking the ‘Active processes’ tab allows for setting process information shown in that column. Information in the ‘Active processes’ tab is more limited than information in the ‘All processes’ tab. However, double clicking on any process in the ‘Active processes’ tab will take you to its entry in hte ‘All processes’ tab.

 

The ‘Rules’ column of the GUI gives a summary of rules that match each process.

Rules

Format: [X][L][_][x][W][g][K][#n][n|d|D][e][p][Mx][R][s][iX][<..<<<<][RHANBI][0-63]

Character(s)	Meaning
X	Excluded from ProBalance
L	CPU Limited (9.3+)
_	Instance Balanced (9.1+)
W	A watchdog rule is set
g	Process induces Performance Mode
K	Keep running (restart if terminates)
#n	Instance count limit of n, e.g. #2 for a limit of 2
n|d|D	Prevents sleep of PC, display, or both, respectively
x	Excluded from foreground boosting
e	IdleSaver is disabled when this process is running
p	Process will cause the PC to enter a particular Power Profile
Mx	Where ‘x’ is the default memory priority set for this process.
R	Default priority class: Real time
H	Default priority class: Highest
A	Default priority class: Above normal
N	Default priority class: Normal
B	Default priority class: Below normal
I	Default priority class: Idle
ih	Default I/O priority class: High
in	Default I/O priority class: Normal
il	Default I/O priority class: Low
ib	Default I/O priority class: Very Low (background)
0-63	Default CPU affinity, i.e. ‘0-2,3,5’ for cores 0,1,2,3,5
<	Hard Throttle level lowest
<<	Hard Throttle level low
<<<	Hard Throttle level moderate
<<<<	Hard Throttle level high

 

The Active Processes Tab

 

Selecting which columns to show

You can select which columns you want visible in the ‘Active Processes’ tab the same way you can in the ‘All Processes’ tab. by right-clicking on the ‘Active processes’ tab or by right-clicking on the list header. In addition, you can resize the columns (at their headers) and change the column ordering by dragging the column headers. These view changes will be remembered by Process Lasso. Double clicking on any process in the ‘Active processes’ tab will take you to its entry in the ‘All processes’ tab, where additional information is available.

The Active Processes tab shows only processes that are actively utilizing the system CPU(s). It displays basic information about them, and a horizontal bar graph to visually depict their active CPU utilization.

Right clicking on one or more of the processes in the ‘Active Processes’ list show the same context menu as found in the ‘All Processes’ tab.
Double clicking on a process in the ‘Active Processes’ list will find the corresponding process in the ‘All Processes’ tab and make it visible.

Screenshot of the ‘Active Processes’ view:

 

Double clicking a process in the active processes view

You can double click a process in the ‘Active processes’ tab to go to that process in the ‘All processes’ tab, where extended information is available.

 

Single process context menu

Right-clicking on a process in the ‘Active Processes’ tab shows the same context menu as in the ‘All processes’ tab. You can perform any available operation on the process.

The context menu when multiple processes are selected is different than when a single process is selected, since not all operations can be performed on multiple processes.

 

Multiple process context menu

Just as in the ‘All processes’ tab, you can select multiple processes and right-click on them to perform an operation on all of them.

 

Keyboard Shortcuts

DEL

Terminate selected processes (forcible)

CTRL+A

Select All processes in current view

Configuration Dialogs

• CPU Limiter
• Instance Balancer
• ProBalance Options
• ProBalance Exclusions
• Default Priorities
• Persistent CPU Affinities
• Auto-Terminate List
• Process Watchdog
• Instance count limits
• Keep running processes
• SmartTrim
• Gaming processes
• Anti-sleep processes
• Application Power Profiles

CPU Limiter

First, it is important to note that the CPU Limiter is not a magic bullet to reduce CPU utilization without consequence. CPU utilization occurs because an application or service is doing something. If you are able, you should address the cause of the CPU utilization, rather than arbitrarily limiting it. Our ProBalance technology does wonders for system responsiveness during high loads without actually reducing CPU use.

However, in some circumstances, it is desirable to reduce a process’s CPU use to achieve more fair access to system resources. This is common in Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environments, or when non-critical background processes are consuming too large a share of system resources. In those cases, the CPU Limiter is a great option.

The CPU Limiter can dynamically reduce the CPU use of running processes by temporarily constraining their CPU affinity. For instance, on a 4 CPU core system, constraining the CPU affinity by 1 core limits the total possible CPU utilization of that process to 75%.

The user creates rules telling the CPU Limiter which processes to act on, and when. When a process match exceeds a threshold over some period, it is limited for the configured duration. Like other rules in Process Lasso, process matches can include wildcards and user names.

The CPU cores removed from a process’s CPU affinity are selected randomly from the set of its original CPU affinity. Once the act-for duration elapses, the original CPU affinity is restored.

While you could accomplish a similar function with a combination of Watchdog rules, the CPU Limiter is easier to use. Using the Watchdog for the same effect would require two rules, one to constrain the CPU affinity when over threshold, and another to restore the original CPU affinity. Finally, the Watchdog rules are limited to statically defined CPU affinities.

The act-for duration can be set to 0 to indicate an indefinite change to a process’s CPU affinity.

Example Use Case

Let’s say you have an issue with Chrome sometimes consuming all available CPU cycles, and you don’t want to set a static CPU affinity that restricts it from short bursts of 100% utilization. You might create a CPU Limiter rule such as:

chrome.exe, after 15 seconds over 30%, restrict by 2 cores for 30 seconds

If a specific user is problematic, you can append that user name to the process match:

chrome.exe:johnny

Wildcards are also supported in process and user names, such as:

 fire*.exe:user*

If no user is specified, then any user matches.

This feature supports Regular Expressions for more complex and precise matching.

Instance Balancer

The Instance Balancer allows you to indicate how CPU cores should be assigned to an application with multiple instances. You can evenly spread the instances across the CPU cores, or set a specific CPU core count for each instance. When there are more instances than allotted CPU cores, instances are ‘stacked’ in a round-robin manner. When the instance count of managed applications changes by new process creation or termination, a re-balance occurs.

This feature supports Regular Expressions for more complex and precise matching.

ProBalance Options

ProBalance Exclusions

This feature supports Regular Expressions for more complex and precise matching.

Persistent Priority Classes

Persistent CPU Priority Classes are available to keep applications running at specific priorities.

Note that use of above-normal priority classes is generally ineffectual at improving performance (it won’t make an app go faster). Instead, it is recommended to target problematic background processes with Below Normal and Idle priority classes to limit their impact on performance sensitive applications. This is what ProBalance does automatically.

Priority classes available in Windows are:

• Real-Time
• High
• Above Normal
• Normal
• Below Normal
• Idle

Persistent CPU Affinities

Auto-Terminate List

The processes listed here will get terminated when they are found to be running. Process Lasso can not (at present) actually prevent them from trying to start up, it just immediately terminates them when it finds them running.

 

Process Watchdog

The process watchdog allows for you to take an action on a process when it exceeds a certain amount of CPU or Memory. You can specify actions of Restart, Terminate, or Change Affinity. You can choose commit size of working set size if using a memory trigger. With both memory and CPU triggers, you can set a time the process must exceed this threshold before action is taken.

Options:

• Divide CPU % thresholds by system CPU count
  Divide CPU thresholds by the total logical core count. For example, 3200% could be given, and when divided by 64 cores, would be a threshold of 50% of total CPU use. This allows for more precision on high core count systems.

This feature supports Regular Expressions for more complex and precise matching.

Instance Count Limits

You can limit the number of instances of a process allowed to be running at the same time (per user session) with this dialog. New instances of processes will be terminated if they match a pattern here and the number of instances is already equal to, or greater than, the instance count limit.

 

Keep Running Processes

You can ensure certain processes are kept running by entering in this dialog. This way, they can restart on crash, or restart if they become unresponsive. You can set this by right-clicking on a process, using the ‘Keep process running’, or by using application menu opion at ‘Options / Configure Keep running processes …’.

 

SmartTrim

SmartTrim is an intelligent memory management algorithm that can trim working sets on a per-process basis when thresholds are reached, and can also clear the system standby list (cache).

 

Performance Mode Processes

You can designate certain proceses to ‘Induce Performance Mode’. This causes Process Lasso to induce the Bitsum Highest Performance power profile and make certain adjustments to ProBalance in an effort to ensure all available CPU cycles go to the game. This mode should ONLY be used for games or other very CPU intensive applications that need every bit of processing power. You designate a performance process by right-clicking on a process and checking the ‘Induce Performance Mode’ menu item, or by using application menu opion at ‘Options / Power / Configure Performance Mode processes …’.

 

Anti-sleep Processes

You can prevent the PC and display from entering a sleep or hibernate state by adding them to the ‘anti-sleep’ list. You can do this by right-clicking on a process, using the ‘When running’ menu, or by using application menu opion at ‘Options / Configure Anti-Sleep processes …’.

 

Persistent Application Power Profiles

You can set certain processes to cause the system to enter the chosen Power Profile each time they are run. When they terminate, the system is returned to the previous power scheme. This lets you boost your PC’s performance automatically when you need it, and save energy when you don’t. You can do this by right-clicking on a process, using the ‘When running’ menu, or by using application menu option at ‘Options / Configure High Performance Power processes …’. Entering this power scheume will disable CPU frequency scaling, giving you maximum performance. It will, however, drain the battery life of laptops, netbooks, and other portable computers faster than typical. When all ‘High Performance’ power mode processes end, the Power Profile is reset back to whatever it originally was.

Main Menu Options

Process Lasso’s extensive menu system allows for configuration tweaks and other operations. The menus available are:

• The application main menu 
  Provides ability to to toggle numerous settings and more. These menu options are described below.
• The process context menu (right-click) 
  This menu lets you set specific options for a process.
• The multi-process context menu (right-click) 
  This menu lets you set specific options for several processes.

PENDING NEW ADDITIONS

Process Matching

When matching rules to processes, a match phrase is given by the user, often called the ‘process match’ in Process Lasso. This can be a simple process name, a string with wildcards, or even a Regular Expression checked against multiple process attributes (e.g. user and command line).

Traditional

Traditional process name matching uses a simple wildcard match, with ‘?’ indicating any single character and ‘*’ indicating a sequence of any character. It is case insensitive. The user name may be appended to the match string with a colon. Depending on the feature, after toggling on path or command line matching, those fields are also compared to the match phrase.

Examples (non-Regex):

chrome.exe
 Match any process named chrome.exe

chrome*
 Match any process that begins with 'chrome'

chrome.exe:bob
 Match any process named chrome.exe running under user 'bob'

Regular Expressions

Process Lasso v9.5+ supports Regular Expression (RegEx) matching to multiple process attributes. This allows for the creation of complex rules that were not previously possible. For instance, a rule could act on Chrome.exe or Firefox.exe when user is Bob or Jeremy. Previously, this would require 4 different rules, and in the case of the Instance Balancer, combining them into a single group was not possible.

Features supporting RegEx:

• CPU Limiter
• Instance Balancer
• Watchdog
• ProBalance Exclusions

Support for RegEx will be come to other features in future versions of Process Lasso.

What is a Regular Expression?

A Regular Expression is a language for pattern matching (and substitution). It has been in use for decades and enjoys widespread support.

A regular expression is a special text string for describing a search pattern. You can think of regular expressions as wildcards on steroids. You are probably familiar with wildcard notations such as *.txt to find all text files in a file manager. The regex equivalent is .*\.txt. – RegexBuddy

Read more:
Quick Reference (Microsoft)
RegexBuddy
RegularExpressions.info

Use of RegEx in Process Lasso

When matching a RegEx, Process Lasso concatenates multiple fields about the process. The format of this consolidated process information string is:

PID,User,Process,Path,PPID,Parent,,,,CommandLine (always last)

Fields:
 PID = process ID
 User = user under which process is running
 Process = basename of process
 Path = file path of process image
 PPID = parent ID
 Parent = parent process name
 CommandLine = process command line (this field is always last. Its index is subject to change!)

In this way, an expression can match to anything in the concatenated string, or only to specific fields, depending on how precise the expression is.

With Process Lasso, Regular Expressions are differentiated from traditional match phrases by encapsulation in forward slashes (e.g. ‘/myregex/’).

All matching is case insensitive. Embedded commas in a field (normally only in the command line field) are escaped with a backslash, so for precise rules this should be taken into account.

Examples

While RegEx allows for powerful matching on multiple patterns and fields, it can also be used in simple ways:

/firefox.exe/
 Match 'firefox?exe' anywhere in any field. Note '.' is a wildcard in RegEx, but you can escape it like 'firefox\.exe' for more precision.

/,firefox\.exe/
 Match only 'firefox.exe' at the start of a field (>0)

/,fire*.exe/
 Match only 'fire*exe' at the start of a field (>0)

/,[fire*.exe|chr*.exe]/
 Match only 'fire*exe' OR 'chr*exe' at the start of a field (>0)

/,bobsmith/ 
 Match user 'bobsmith' at the start of a field (>0)

/,.*-type=renderer(^,)*$/
 Match '-type=renderer' anywhere in last field (command line). Note starts with a comma, then ends before a new field occurs (see below for embedded commas).

/,.*-type=renderer[^(,)|(\\,)]*$/
 Prior with handling of escaped embedded commas in the command line.

Advanced

To match specific fields, an expression such as this can be used to match specifically field 3 (the process name):

^([^,]*,){2}
 Explanation:
 ^ = Starts at beginning of string
 ([^,]*,) = Not a comma repeated zero or more times, followed by a comma
 {2} = Repeat prior match (a comma delimited field) 2 times

/^([^,]*,)(jeremy|bob),/
 Match processes with username of jeremy or bob

/^([^,]*,){2}chrome\.exe,/
 Match processes named chrome.exe

/^([^,]*,){2}.*chr.*,/
 Match processes whose name contains with ‘chr’

/^([^,]*,){2}(chrome\.exe|firefox\.exe).*,/
 Match processes whose name starts with ‘chrome.exe’ or 'firefox.exe'

/^([^,]*,){5}boinc\.exe.*,/
 Match processes whose parent is ‘boinc.exe’

/^([^,]*,)(jeremy|bob),chrome\.exe/ 
 Match processes whose name is chrome.exe under user of jeremy or bob.

/^([^,]*,){2}chrome.exe,.*,.*-type=renderer[^(,|\\,)]*$
 Match process name ‘chrome.exe’ and has '-type=renderer' in the command line (last field)

/^([^,]*,){3}.*\\program files.*/
 Match path containing ‘\Program Files\’ (matching is case insensitive).

How to test Regular Expressions
To test regular expression patterns, create a text file with rows simulating Process Lasso’s provided match string. Then use grep (WSL or Linux) or another tool to match RegEx. Note that the encapsulating forward slashes need to be removed. An example is:

sample.txt:
20116,jeremy,chrome.exe,C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe,19233,chrome.exe,,,,"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --type=renderer

test command:
grep -P 'chr.*' sample.txt