2006-10-23

Idea for Process Explorer Enhancement

In a recent blog entry's exploration, I was determining which ".NET" processes were using what versions of the .NET Framework. The method that I was using for this was to find the ".NET processes" in Process Explorer (highlighted in Yellow by default) and either note the version of MSCOREE.DLL, or check the path of DLLs that are loaded into the process' address space - if %WINDIR%\Assembly and 2.0.0.0 or 2.0.50727 show up, the process is using the .NET Framework 2.0. Substitute appropriate version numbers for other versions of the .NET Framework.

Then, because I'm lazy, I started thinking... what if Process Explorer could tell me this information without me having to dig a little bit for it? Process Explorer could highlight processes, using a configurable color, to indicate the version of the .NET Framework the process is using. E.g., processes with DLLs from the .NET Framework 1.1 would be highlighted in yellow, processes with DLLs from the .NET Framework 2.0 would be highlighted in blue, etc. By default, the colors could all be set to yellow, but the user could specify their own color for each version of the .NET Framework.

Another consideration might be to add this information in a column that can be displayed in the upper pane of Process Explorer.

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