Frequently Asked Questions

No, Process Hacker is portable and can run without installation. Download the portable ZIP version, extract it, and run ProcessHacker.exe. You can even run it from a USB drive.

KProcessHacker is a kernel-mode driver that enhances Process Hacker's capabilities. It's not required but recommended for features like kernel-mode stack traces, efficient process enumeration, and file handle name retrieval. Process Hacker will prompt you to install it on first launch.

Right-click on the process in the list and select "Terminate" or "Terminate Tree" (to terminate the process and all its children). You can also select the process and press Delete key. Some processes may require administrator privileges to terminate.

Go to Tools → Find Handles or DLLs (or press Ctrl+H), enter the file path or name, and Process Hacker will show you all processes that have handles to that file. This is useful when you can't delete or modify a file because it's in use.

Go to View → Network (or press Ctrl+Shift+N) to see all active network connections. You can see which processes are using which ports, view remote IP addresses, and close connections if needed. Check our Network Monitoring tutorial for more details.

Create a blank file named "ProcessHacker.exe.settings.xml" in the same directory as ProcessHacker.exe. Make sure file extensions are visible in Windows Explorer (Tools → Folder options → View → uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types"). Process Hacker will save its settings to this file.

Process Hacker works on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11. Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions are supported. You must use the version that matches your system architecture (32-bit or 64-bit).

No, unlike other programs, you cannot run the 32-bit version of Process Hacker on a 64-bit system and expect it to work correctly. Always download and use the version that matches your system architecture.

Yes, Process Hacker is completely safe. It's open source software licensed under GPL v3, and the source code is publicly available on GitHub. Some antivirus programs may flag it as potentially unwanted software due to its powerful system access capabilities, but this is a false positive. You can safely add it to your antivirus whitelist.

Antivirus software flags Process Hacker because it has powerful system access capabilities similar to malware tools. However, Process Hacker is legitimate open source software. The detection is a false positive. You should add Process Hacker to your antivirus whitelist/exclusions. See our Troubleshooting page for more information.

Like any powerful system tool, Process Hacker could potentially be misused, but it's designed as a legitimate system administration and debugging tool. It's open source, so its code can be reviewed by anyone. Process Hacker is intended for system administrators, developers, and security professionals to monitor and manage system processes.

System Informer (formerly Process Hacker 3) is the successor to Process Hacker. It includes all features of Process Hacker plus additional capabilities like device manager integration, firewall management, and dark mode. Process Hacker 2.39 is the last version of Process Hacker, while System Informer continues to receive updates.

You need Visual Studio 2017 or later. Download the source code from GitHub, open ProcessHacker.sln in Visual Studio, and build the solution. Alternatively, run build_release.cmd from the build directory. See the GitHub repository for detailed instructions.

Yes, Process Hacker supports plugins. You can configure plugins from Hacker → Plugins. Some plugins like ExtendedTools provide additional disk and network information, but they require administrative rights. Make sure plugins are up to date to avoid crashes.