Tasklist.exe

Microsoft has published a KB article on programs that have problems with Windows XP Service Pack 2 here. Leave aside the list of programs, what I found interesting in the KB, was a command I learned “Tasklist.exe”.

Tasklist.exe is a command line tool, that basically lists all the running processes in a machine. It can accept an optional username and password and be able to run in that context. Tasklist.exe /svc will result in a display of all processes running as service, including the DLLs they have loaded in their memory. This can be useful when debugging a problem, especially to find out on what one instance of the mysterious svchost.exe process has loaded inside it.

Tasklist.exe /m SEARCHCONDITION, will result in display of all process that have the matching string named DLLs loaded in them. For a full list of options from command line, try “TaskList.exe /?“