Process Commander from Stardock Systems, Inc. is a collection of tools that Stardock calls a "process manager." All of us have probably experienced the situation where the OS/2 input queue has stopped responding to user input because of a rogue application. Most of the time pressing Ctrl-Esc will allow you to kill the errant process, but not always. Sometimes a warm reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Del) is the only alternative. Process Commander was designed to rescue your system from such a locked input queue.

I was very much looking forward to using Process Commander because the Netscape Navigator beta was consistently lock up my system's input queue. The package arrived with one floppy disk and a 73 page manual, and I set out to install it.

Installation

Hung Processes

Still in the Process Commander session, I pressed Esc to get back to the Desktop and what I saw was not pretty. It appeared that the screen tried to switch into a different mode but didn't quite make it because the screen was still in "text" mode but filled with odd characters in all sorts of colors, some of them flashing. Then it got really ugly. I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Enter again, hoping to bring Process Commander back. Nothing happened. Then I tried Ctrl-Esc to see if I could get to the OS/2 Window List. Nothing happened. Now I was desperate: Ctrl-Alt-Del. And nothing happened. This was something I had never experienced under OS/2, a hang that even Ctrl-Alt-Del couldn't break through. All that was left was the power switch.

After waiting several minutes for CHKDSK to clean up my rather large HPFS partitions, I decided to try hanging the input queue first and then activating Process Commander. Navigator dutifully locked the queue, and Ctrl-Alt-Enter brought up Process Commander. I was able to kill the Navigator process, but pressing Esc to get back to the Desktop brought the screen of death again.

It was obvious that something in my video setup was not cooperating with Process Commander, so I reset my system to VGA mode. It's been a long time since I looked at a computer running in VGA mode, and it was almost as bad as sitting in front of a machine and watching Program Manager come up. Once past the initial repulsion, I opened Navigator to lock up the queue. However, try as I might, Navigator refused to do its dirty deed. So, I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Enter and brought up Process Commander. Finger shaking and eyes closed, I pressed Esc to get back to the Desktop. When I opened my eyes, there was the ugly, but fully functional, VGA version of my Desktop. My problems were clearly caused by a buggy video driver and not Process Commander. The driver for my Number Nine ViRGE card dates from August, and I suspect that it needs some tweaking to work properly under Warp 4.

Other Features

Process Commander Server is a very handy program that allows you to Telnet to a remote machine and perform operations such as killing processes, rebooting, etc. Obviously security is important with a tool like this, and Stardock has implemented fully configurable security options that allow you to specify which users from which machines have the power to perform various actions. Network administrators will find this utility extremely useful.

Process Commander also enhances the OS/2 shutdown procedure. One thing that has always annoyed me is the lack of a Shutdown folder, the counterpart of the Startup folder. Process Commander adds this feature to your OS/2 system. The Shutdown procedure itself is also more flexible than the standard OS/2 shutdown. In the full-screen Process Commander session (or by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F12) you can choose to perform what Stardock calls an Immediate Shutdown. In this case, OS/2 flushes file system buffers, but does not inform running tasks that a shutdown is in progress. Although you wouldn't normally want to use this shutdown method, it could be necessary at times. I suspect this method is like pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del in standard OS/2. Quick Shutdown terminates running processes but tries to save any changes that have been made to the Workplace Shell. Enhanced Shutdown closes OS/2 sessions that are not running programs, automatically closes any programs in a list that you specify, executes the contents of the Shutdown folder, and then performs a normal OS/2 shutdown.

Until Process Commander came along I had no use for the "Windows 95" keys on my machine. But now I can configure them to perform various functions such as opening the Window List. You can also configure hot-key sequences to perform various functions.

Finally, Process Commander ships with a variety of command line tools that ReXX junkies like myself will love. Many of the functions of Process Commander can be accessed with these tools. You can kill processes, change process and thread priorities, get system information, and shut down your system.

Conclusions

Process Commander v1.0

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