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In the golden era of Windows 7—especially on the 32-bit architecture—Microsoft’s built-in Task Manager was fine for killing a frozen notepad. But for power users, IT pros, and anyone who heard their fan spin up for no reason, Task Manager was a toy. The real tool was (and still is) .

If you still maintain a Windows 7 32-bit machine (for legacy hardware or software), keep a copy of Process Explorer on your desktop. Task Manager shows you the surface. Process Explorer shows you the truth. Mark Russinovich and the Sysinternals team released Process Explorer in 1996. It is now maintained by Microsoft and remains free.