BottleNeck 1.0

Gandalf_The_Grey · Apr 22, 2025 at 12:14 PM

Hey guys, I have been thinking about upgrading my computer since it is close to 4 years old. It is a 6700K with 32GB RAM and 512 Samsung SSD. But before I decided to pull the trigger, I wanted to see if there were any bottlenecks on the system caused by CPU, RAM or HDD, for the software that I run and for what I use my computer for. I looked around for a utility but could not find one, so I built a little app that is mainly a tray app that monitors the CPU, RAM and HDD utilization in realtime, and displays the utilization in the system tray.

There is probably already an app like this, so if there is please let me know and I can use it instead, especially since it will certainly have more features. Obviously there is Windows Task Manager, Process Explorer, KillSwitch, etc., but I really just want a tray icon that displays these three utilizations in realtime so that I do not have to pull up Task Manager whenever my computer seems to be running slow. If there is nothing already like this and if you guys have a few simple suggestions on how to improve it, please let me know, but obviously we want to keep it super simple.

It turns out that there are no current bottlenecks on my main system, but when I installed it on my 8 year old iMac (secondary computer) running bootcamp this morning, I immediately figured out that my CPU is experiencing a rather significant bottleneck, and the reason it is running slow. The SSD and RAM were fine.

BottleNeck currently only monitors the C Drive, but we can create an option to monitor all of the drives. I did it this way for now because from what I have seen, it is usually the C drive that creates HDD system bottlenecks, and pretty much never other drives.

BTW, BottleNeck currently requires .net 4.5. If there are many Windows 7 users who do not have .net 4.5 installed, then I might be able to create a .net 3.5 installer at some point
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New Update - BottleNeck 1.0 | MalwareTips Forums

Gandalf_The_Grey · Apr 22, 2025 at 12:16 PM

Updated link for BottleNeck...

BottleNeck 1.0
https://www.cyberlock.global/Download/InstallBottleNeck.exe
SHA-256: 8cc83ac999293f9ed073c068897556b278225115694875b2055b50c50cc8e2b7
Click to expand...

New Update - BottleNeck 1.0 | MalwareTips Forums

EASTER · Apr 22, 2025 at 6:40 PM

Gandalf_The_Grey said: ↑

Updated link for BottleNeck...
New Update - BottleNeck 1.0 | MalwareTips Forums
Click to expand...

Gandalf_The_Grey · Apr 24, 2025 at 1:23 PM

Mail from Dan: BottleNeck 2.0

It is super lightweight and has some pretty cool features, including...

- Real-time performance monitoring of CPU, RAM and HDD / SDD

- Checks drive S.M.A.R.T Status on startup and every hour, and alerts if there is a pending drive failure

- Checks to ensure BitLocker is NOT enabled on startup and every hour, and alerts if BitLocker is enabled. This is to prevent BitLocker from inadvertently being enabled, and we will probably need to make this optional for users who do use BitLocker. If you use BitLocker, you might want to skip this version... unless you want it to alert you on startup and every hour that BitLocker is enabled on your system . There are users who are unknowingly having their drives encrypted with BitLocker, but they are unable to find their decryption key, so all of their data is lost.

- For computers with multiple drives, BottleNeck will keep your drives active while you are using the computer, and lets them sleep when you are not using the computer. That way you do not have to wait 10 or so seconds for the drives to wake up when you access them.

- As you can see in the screenshot, there is a little blue indicator that shows the max value for CPU, RAM and HDD utilization for your current session. You can click on any of the progress bars to clear the max value. Also, whenever a process has higher than average CPU or HDD utilization (not RAM because it is too difficult to determine what would be considered high RAM usage for a given process), you will see a little blue label that contains the process name, so you will know which process is causing the high utilization. You can also click on the process name to automatically navigate to the file location.

There is a portable and installer version, and I have not tested the portable version extensively, but it should be good to go as well, but if there are any issues please let me know!

BottleNeck 2.00
https://taskbarplus.com/download/InstallBottleNeck20.exe
SHA-256: a33d3b857fe6fdef5c85108acc49abd2fd002d54bb66276ff72fae72a757a72e

BottleNeck 2.00 Portable
https://taskbarplus.com/download/BottleNeckPortable20.exe
SHA-256: 8b58718eb11af23a2bf8531b9c72d556a3c83cdf4c44183d1c4b923efe65f8d3
Click to expand...

EASTER · Apr 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM

Bottleneck Portable?!! Thanks for the heads up @Gandalf_The_Grey - I still favor the Portables. Good to see.

Pliskin · Apr 25, 2025 at 7:45 AM

EASTER said: ↑

Bottleneck Portable?!!
Click to expand...

It's more Bottleneck no-install, because settings are saved in C:\ProgramData\BottleNeck.

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