The following article will take a closer look at five application monitors and restarters for the Windows operating system. These programs monitor applications that the user configures. They usually also come with options to react on certain events.

Restarter

All application monitoring options are displayed in the main interface of the Restarter program. It displays the list of running processes on the top with the option to select one that should be monitored by the application. The monitoring interval can be configured as well as several startup and error parameters including killing the application if it becomes unresponsive and restarting it if it is not running anymore.

Pro

• Easy to use, manage everything in one program window.
• Low resource usage
• Can restart applications
• Logging

Con

• Can only monitor one application unless started several times
• No remote notification options
• Not portable

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Application Monitor

Application Monitor is another program that can monitor and restart applications that have been added to the program by the user. The process of adding applications to the software is slightly more complex as the user needs to select the program executable from the computer’s hard drive manually. Multiple executables can be added to the program this way. Application Monitor will automatically check if the program is running, restart it if it is not. It can write events into a log file and notify the user by sending an email to an email account if the SMTP server settings are filled out in the program’s options.

Pro

• Portable software
• Remote notifications (email)
• Logging
• Can restart applications
• Can monitor multiple applications

Con

• Not as easy to configure as Restarter

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Keep Running

Keep Running is a basic application monitor that needs to be configured in a separate configuration file. It is a portable application that can monitor one application in the Windows operating system. The administrator needs to add the full path to the software and other options in the configuration file. It is also only possible to monitor one application at a time. A positive side effect of the bare-bone approach is that the process of the program uses the least amount of computer memory in the test field.

Pro

• Lightweight application
• Portable software

Con

• Difficult configuration
• Can only monitor one application
• No logging
• No notifications

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Kiwi Application Monitor

The free version of Kiwi Application Monitor offers basic options to monitor processes in the Windows operating system. It is possible to monitor multiple applications, view statistics, configure email notifications and logging options. It is possible to configure several options to close or restart applications if events are triggered.

Pro

• Can monitor multiple applications
• Statistics about monitored applications
• Email Notifications
• Logging

Con

• Not portable
• Moderate resource usage

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CRP (Control Running Programs)

Control Running Programs needs to be run in compatibility mode in Windows 7. The program can be used to control three distinct program behaviors: Program instances, starting and memory usage. It is for example possible to configure that a program should be restarted if it is not running (or crashed), that only one instance of the program should be open at any time and that it should be closed if it exceeds a certain amount of computer memory. CRP supports logging but no notifications.

Pro

• Can monitor multiple applications
• Logging

Con

• Not portable
• No notifications
• Needs to be run in compatibility mode in Windows 7

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Process Monitor comes with an option to log the Windows boot process. It will log everything which usually results in boot logs that are larger than 100 Megabytes. The program can however be used – with some expertise – to locate problematic drivers that slow down the boot process.

Here is how this is done. Download and start Process Monitor. Select the Options menu at the top and the Enable Boot Logging option in that menu. This makes Process Monitor log the next boot process of the operating system.

Restart the computer afterwards and start Process Monitor once the operating system has loaded. You will be asked to save the boot log to a directory on the hard drive. Load that boot log afterwards using [Ctrl O] or File > Open. This is a huge log file and the first thing that needs to be done is to filter for entries that are related to system drivers. You can do that by pressing [Ctrl L]. This will open the filter menu.

Locate the filter Process Name is System Exclude and remove it from the list of filters. Now add the following two filters to the list:

Process Name is System Include
Path ends with .sys Include

A click on ok will only display the entries that match both filters that have been added. This is still a list of 2500+ entries. The important part is to look at the time of day column. This lists the load time for all operations. All you need to do now is to locate gaps between events. Gaps of a few seconds need to be analyses, everything else is usually not worth analysis.

The example above shows a gap of almost 16 seconds between the two marked entries. Look at the path of the entry that is using that much boot time, the driver name is located at the end of the path. In this example it was sptd.sys. A quick Google search revealed that it is a driver used by Daemon Tools. There are two options available once the program has been identified.

It is possible to research the topic further by visiting forums (see if other users have the problem, find possible solutions), contacting the developer and updating the program or hardware (if possible). The other option is to remove the program from the computer system if it is not needed or if alternatives are available that do not increase the boot time by that amount.

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Some of the applications that are included in the Sysinternals suite should be installed on every computer such as Rootkit Revealer, Autoruns, Process Explorer and Regmon. This collection might confuse inexperienced users due to the sheer amount of exectuables that are listed in the main directory. It is difficulty to find out what some of the executables are doing, do you know for instance what psfile.exe will do ?

It would have been nice if at least a readme file would have been included to make it easier to understand the executables. A gui would have been even better. I would advise everyone to visit the Sysinternals website to lookup the programs before you execute them.

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