Summary: Tasklist.exe is a utility to examine your system's running programs. It's not on every version of Windows but a more powerful alternative is available.
What is Tasklist.exe, and why don't I have it?
In several articles here I talk about using a tool called tasklist to determine which services are being provided by the various instances of svchost.
As it turns out that advice is very confusing for some since they don't actually have tasklist. Users with Windows XP Home for one since tasklist.exe is provided only with Windows XP Pro and (I assume) Windows 2003 server.
Fortunately there's an alternative, and it involves one of my favorite tools.
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SysInternals makes a free tool called Process Explorer or "procexp". I've referenced it in various articles here because it's a great tool for viewing everything from what processes are running on your machine, to what process is holding a file open. It turns out that it's great for determining which services an instance of a process is providing.
Here's a portion of procexp's display on my machine:
You'll note that there are at least two instances of SVCHOST.EXE running. If we double click on one we get the following:
Note the tab labeled "Services" at the top. If we click on that we'll get something like this:
This instance of SVCHOST happens to be providing 30 separate services to the operating system, from "AudioSrv", aka "Windows Audio", on down.
The information is actually a more detailed than tasklist would provide since it includes the full text name of each service, as well as the descriptive help information for each found at the bottom of the display.
Process Explorer is free and runs on all Windows platforms. The services information we're discussing here only applies to Windows NT based versions which include Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Article C1924 - April 12, 2004
hi,
- I want to use it from my program. can I use 'Process Explorer'?
- will tasklist.exe work on win2k? exe is single file which I can add on win2k system or any other depedent files needed?
regards,
Pranav
Posted by: Pranav Vora at September 5, 2006 6:49 AMProcess Explorer now can be found at http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html
Posted by: HJr at September 16, 2006 10:34 AMIf you have a box with XP pro, you can look in the C:\windows\system32 folder for the program tasklist.exe. From there, it's only a matter of copying it to the C:\windows\system32 drive on your other computer. Know this works with home, not sure about older versions. A.K.A. 2000.
Posted by: Steve at February 16, 2007 7:15 PMUnder Win2000 the file is called tlist.exe and is not loaded by default. I just loaded it on my Win2000 computer from by Win 2000 Professional CDROM. Mount the CDROM and extract it from the support.cab file under Support\tools. Put it in C:\windows\system32. Under START, RUN do tlist /? for options. Hope this helps.
Posted by: BSmith at February 21, 2007 1:27 PMHi all ,
Is there any way to know what processes are running on a remote pc in a a LAN, including what files have been opened and what sites have been opened. I want to do this using command prompt only, using commands like tlist, tasklist, process, etc
Posted by: gc at April 4, 2007 11:52 PMYou still havent stated how to get rid of the error! it's really annoying how i have to turn on my pc to this error and have no sound.
Posted by: Adam at July 13, 2007 2:13 AMProcess Explorer now can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
Posted by: Rusty Nail at March 23, 2008 6:42 AMMost of the tasks can also be accessed by pushing control, alt, delete. You can find most of the processes and charts by the tabs on top.
Posted by: r j at December 25, 2008 1:55 AMi would like to know what should be deleted and what should be kept in the Task Manager. When looking at technicians arrnaging computers i see many of them removing many of these tasks. could you kindly tell me what should be keep and what to remove as my CPU usage is being almost all the time high in its percentage.
Thanks
Kleven
06-Jan-2009
It's not just you Leo, who refers to tasklist.exe. Microsoft themselves in kb article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875357/?FR=1) which applies to Windows XP Home also refer to tasklist.exe but don't tell you where to find it.
Posted by: FriendlyDutch at April 25, 2009 9:07 AM