#How to check program files on mac portable#
#How to check program files on mac software#
#How to check program files on mac windows 8#

The By Folder tab is useful for tracing if file reads or writes are coming from non standard locations such as the Temp or Users folders or even other drives. This window will show information about reads, writes, events, file access times and the path to the files causing the activity. To open the window, launch Process Monitor and let it monitor the system, preferably when you get unknown or abnormal disk access, then go to the Tools menu > File Summary. One issue is the window that displays the disk activity isn’t in real time and shows what has been happening right up until you open the File Summary window. The filtering system is probably one of the most important areas to get to know otherwise you will always be overloaded with information. For such an advanced tool Process Monitor is reasonably easy to use and it starts monitoring the system as soon as you start the program. System monitoring will give you information about disk usage and file system activity in addition to many other things, and probably the number one tool for this job is Process Monitor by Microsoft owned Sysinternals.

If you don’t allow the program to access the internet or have no internet on the computer, none of the details at all will be shown. Use the Freeze tick box to pause the list if the window is updating too quickly for you.Ĭlicking on the process in the list will pull information about the process from the internet such as details, security, known problems, external links and etc.

#How to check program files on mac portable#

After installation (or extract the executable with 7-Zip to get a portable version), run the program and it will automatically start monitoring your system and display the processes that currently have hard disk or CPU activity. The program’s interface is very easy to understand. Besides hard disk access, the program will also show what is using up CPU cycles, give information about the process itself and even offers the option of sending the file to VirusTotal or running a scan with Kaspersky Security Scan. If you want a simple interface that shows what is currently accessing your hard disks with nothing at all to configure, then What’s my computer doing? will probably be the tool for you.

#How to check program files on mac windows 8#

If your version of Task Manager doesn’t have disk usage activity monitoring or you want to separate reads and writes, which the Windows 8 and 10 version cannot do, here are 5 alternative ways to find out what programs are accessing your hard disk drive. While it’s not particularly advanced, the Windows 8 and 10 Task Manager disk usage column does at least give you a good idea if something is using the hard disk more than it should. This is something not included with the Windows XP, Vista or 7 Task Manager.

One of the improvements in Windows 8 was the updated built in Task Manager that includes a column for each process’s disk usage. Also if you’re using a laptop, a constantly working hard drive will help shorten the battery life. Solid State Drives (SSDs) only have a limited number of writes so it is especially important that those devices don’t have programs constantly writing to them when they don’t have to.

#How to check program files on mac software#

This could be due to a number of factors such as security software updating or running background scans, scheduled defrags, Windows updates being installed, web browsers or download managers, the list goes on.Ĭhecking what processes are constantly and actively accessing your hard drive is important to detect suspicious or unnecessary activity. Sometimes there may be constant drive activity when you think there really should be very little, or none at all. When Windows is sitting idle and you think it’s doing nothing, it is often reading from or writing to your hard drive, even if it’s only a few bytes here and there.