Windows XP Priority settings

September 28, 2004 9:01 AM

In Windows XP Pro, is there some doodad/command line switch/whatever that will let me set a task's priority to "low" by default? I have an application that's a CPU hog, and I have to manually set its priority if I expect to do anything else while the program in question is running. If there's a way to set a default priority, I haven't been able to figure it out. Help?
posted by WolfDaddy to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

This page has the info you're looking for. It speaks of running things in High priority, but much of it can be applied to running things at Low priority. For example, from a command line or batch file you can do:

start /low command

Where "command" is the program path. See also this thread about using the above method while passing command line parameters. This site also has some good general info on handling tasks in Windows.

Google query that I used.
posted by mrgavins at 9:14 AM on September 28, 2004

The "start" command lets you do this, e.g start /low C:\Program Files\MyProgram\myprog.exe. You can either modify the shortcut to run this instead of the program directly, or create a .bat file with it.
posted by boaz at 9:15 AM on September 28, 2004

Or, yeah, what mrgavins said.
posted by boaz at 9:16 AM on September 28, 2004

Powermenu! It rocks!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:46 PM on September 28, 2004

Response by poster: Thanks for including the google query, mrgavins. For some reason, even though I used 'command line' in asking the question, I never thought to add it to my search terms. DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Thanks, too, Stav, for the link to Powermenu. It does, indeed, appear to rock.

And thanks to you boaz, just because I can cut'n'paste your example.

Okay, the minute and a half is up, the orchestra has started to drown me out, and Billy Crystal is hustling my ass off stage. Thanks everyone.
posted by WolfDaddy at 8:22 AM on September 29, 2004