Software Alternatives & Reviews

Process Monitor VS WinDbg

Compare Process Monitor VS WinDbg and see what are their differences

Process Monitor logo Process Monitor

Monitor file system, Registry, process, thread and DLL activity in real-time.

WinDbg logo WinDbg

WinDbg is a multipurposed debugger for Microsoft Windows, distributed on the web by Microsoft as...
  • Process Monitor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-03
  • WinDbg Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-18

Process Monitor videos

Process Monitor, powerful tool to troubleshoot applications and Windows.

More videos:

  • Review - Process Monitor: Basic Operation
  • Review - Malware Analysis - Tools - Process Monitor Basic

WinDbg videos

Getting familiar with WinDbg Preview - THR3014

More videos:

  • Review - Analyzing Windows crash dump using WINDBG
  • Review - Analyzing User Mode Dumps With WinDbg

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Process Monitor and WinDbg)
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
IDE
0 0%
100% 100
Command Line Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Software Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Process Monitor and WinDbg. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Process Monitor seems to be a lot more popular than WinDbg. While we know about 182 links to Process Monitor, we've tracked only 6 mentions of WinDbg. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Process Monitor mentions (182)

  • DLLs in Rust🦀
    To be sure that our exe is actually looking for the DLL, fire up the SysInternals' Process Monitor. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • can't get PTAT to run on RPL-U i7-1365URE eval board
    Don't know what PTAT stands for, but whenever I have issues with windows software running properly I pull out Process Monitor to log what that program was doing at the time of the error message. Sometimes there is a clue such as not being able to find a particular file, or registry key, or something else crashing etc. Source: 10 months ago
  • Software developer looking to experiment with SCCM
    This might be a bit advanced but if it was me I would probably get frustrated and use SysInternals specifically procmon Https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon. Source: 10 months ago
  • Browsers that are resource efficient?
    Used Procmon, Diskmon with a mix of CrystalDiskinfo in my testings to kinda figure out the browsers that did a lot of writing and reading to my old SSD in a ancient laptop I have. You can pretty much get estimates of the ones that use too much Disk resources. Source: 10 months ago
  • Windows Registry
    You can use something like Process Monitor (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon) to see what processes are interacting with which registry keys. Source: 11 months ago
View more

WinDbg mentions (6)

  • Having Issues Deploying a Driver to my Test System - Windows Docs so confusing
    Windows 11, version 22H2 release of the WDK Installed + added to Visual Studio. Source: 10 months ago
  • Stack Trace / Thread Dump Analysis
    The stack frames will look cryptic, but if that's good enough for you -- there you go! If you want a clearer ST, you'll have to download and install Debug Tools and load Debug Symbols into the ProcessExplorer as shown in tutorials:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Dagger: a new way to build CI/CD pipelines
    Okay, here’s an SDK I use. It’s 16GB. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/download-the-wdk#enterprise-wdk-ewdk Show me how to use this with GitHub actions, if it’s not too hard. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Creating a driver - Where to start, I have 0 knowledge or experience
    1) I have downloaded VScode, windows SDK, windows WDK, and the EWDK. The video only mentions downloading the first three items ^. However, the windows link I used to download the SDK and WDK had a 3rd step to download the EWDK. Link for Reference. What is an EWDK and do I need it? 2) I am using windows and the video says to download a VM. I assume I do not need to do that because I am already in windows. If my... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Open a dump file with MS studio?
    I also downloaded the " Windows Driver Kit (WDK). " Not really sure what to do next... Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Process Monitor and WinDbg, you can also consider the following products

Process Explorer - The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'l…

OllyDbg - OllyDbg is a 32-bit assembler level analysing debugger.

htop - htop - an interactive process viewer for Unix. This is htop, an interactive process viewer for Unix systems. It is a text-mode application (for console or X terminals) and requires ncurses. Latest release: htop 2.

X64dbg - X64dbg is a debugging software that can debug x64 and x32 applications.

Windows Task Manager - Need assistance with your Microsoft product? Find helpful articles for Windows, Office, Microsoft Account, Microsoft Store, Xbox, and more.

Immunity Debugger - Immunity Debugger is a powerful new way to write exploits, analyze malware, and reverse engineer...