When you open the Windows Task Manager or "Task Manager", by right clicking on the bar below, you can see all the active processes, including their memory and CPU consumption. By right clicking on one of the processes you will notice an entry called " Set priority ".
Changing the priorities of a process means assigning it greater or lesser importance, telling Windows to devote more or less power to it.
This type of configuration would allow you to start and load active applications faster, sacrificing those that remain in the background.
The problem and the reason why nobody starts to modify these priorities, is that modifying them would also mean remembering to have done so, in order to put the values back on purpose.
However, there are tools that change priorities automatically, depending on the programs that open on your computer.
First of all, just for the record, by right-clicking on the computer resources, going to the properties and then on the Advanced tab, you will be able to access the performance panel.
On Windows 7, from performance, you have to press on advanced tools and then on " Change the appearance and performance of Windows ".
From the Advanced tab you can adjust the allocation of processor resources by placing higher priority on programs rather than background services (you can only give priority to these if your computer is used as a server).
As you can see, there aren't many choices for managing the processor and power distribution.
The best program to optimize processor use and, consequently, speed up Windows and prevent the CPU from rising to 100% is Process Lasso, which I have already talked about in detail (which has become paid).
A much more simplified free tool that does nothing but automatically change the priorities of the processes, raising that of the programs and active windows instead is TopWinPrio .
This software, acting in the background, is capable of increasing the performance of active applications.
It has the ability to put the active application in high priority, keeping all other processes in low priority.
This directs a large part of the CPU to the program you need, increasing its response time .
You can observe how WintopPrio works by using a game or heavy programs such as Adobe Photoshop or iTunes.
This TopWinPrio does nothing but tell Windows to increase the priority of the process behind an active window, lowering that of the others.
When an application is minimized or if it remains inactive, its priority is immediately changed by lowering it.
It is therefore an automatic manager of those process priorities that can be changed manually.
In this way, an active application can always obtain more CPUs than other programs which, although open, are not used.
Once TopWinPrio is installed you can see it in the system bar near the clock.
The main interface has 3 tabs:
- Priolist is an information screen on the changes made by the program;
- Boost Settings is used to change priorities permanently for active applications and programs in the background;
- Application Settings allows instead to set specific priorities for certain programs.
TopWinPrio works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.
This is not a fundamental program (Process Lasso is much more powerful and intelligent) but, if you are not happy and satisfied with how the programs respond when they are executed, then you can try to play with the priorities from WinTopPrio, without risking any problem or side effect.
If you don't like TopWinPrio, there are other similar tools to speed up the execution of high priority programs for Windows .
