Automatically starting a child process with 'High' priority?

Question

My computer running Windows 7 is getting old, and Flash content stutters a bit too much. I am finding that elevating the priority of the plugin process helps a lot.

I know of the /high switch to start an executable with 'High' priority, but I don't know how to raise the priority of a child process (plugin executable kicked off by a (parent) browser process) automatically.

I'd like to do this without installing any additional software on the machine. If there's a way to do this from the browser itself (I use Firefox and Chrome), it'd be even better.

Also, FMI: Are there any possible unintended consequences that I may be overlooking?

Solution 1

Whenever I play a Flash video in Firefox a couple of instances of FlashPlayerPlugin_11_7_700_224.exe start up (version number will obviously change over time). You can run the following command to set the priority of a process from the command line:

wmic process where name="FlashPlayerPlugin_11_7_700_224.exe" setpriority 32768

However, doing this when you start Firefox will not work since the FlashPlayerPlugin process is started on-demand, and killed once it is no longer required. So you can create a batch file that you can run as and when required, or perhaps schedule the file to be executed every say 10 mins. or so.

Solution 2

Open your Firefox shortcut icon properties, and paste %comspec% /c start /HIGH FireFox.exe into the Target Location box.

Click Apply

That is all.

This particular shortcut will now always start Firefox at a HIGH priority, and you can make other icons for NORMAL priority, if you want, too.

Solution 3

There are tools outside which can adjust the priority to what you want.

One of them is Prio. Here you can save the priority in taskmgr:

Each time you run the Program now, it will be started with the saved priority.

Comments

[johny why]

i found a way to start chrome browser high-priority, without need for 3rd party software. But child processes aren't always high-- sometimes low or normal. superuser.com/questions/1428516/…

[johny why]

I found a partial solution, posted at my link above.

[Karan]

You have to keep Prio running for this, right? Looks like they just automated the polling of the task list and setting priority when the specified task is detected.

[magicandre1981]

this is a small DLL which is loaded during Windows boot.