Freeze/Hibernate program through the OS possible?

[MagicLess]

I've been wondering how difficult it would be to implement a function of the OS to essentially freeze a program from using any more CPU resources. It wouldn't matter to me to let it remain in the RAM to get back going again. Are there any operating system that already do this?

I only wonder since Windows Task Manager requires at least one CPU thread be utilized by a program.

[CapnBFG]

If I'm understanding you right, then this is something that can be done on Unix/Linux systems in a couple of different ways. First, when you have a process running in a terminal in the foreground, hitting Ctrl+Z causes the program to sleep/pause/stop. It will sit there until you tell it to do something else. For example, typing 'bg' will make it run in the background, no longer linked to the terminal from which you launched it, and 'fg' will bring it back to running in the terminal as it was before you paused it. The other way I know of is to sleep it by process ID. Typing 'ps' at the command line gives you a list of processes running within that shell, or 'top' will give you all the processes with the most usage. I don't remember offhand what the command is to list all processes in all shells, but you can get that info from the Gnome/KDE equivalent of the Windows task manager. Anyway, once you have the numeric PID of the process you want to sleep, you just type 'kill -stop PID' where PID is the number itself. To resume it you type "kill -cont PID'. If you leave off the -stop or -cont, it will actually kill the process, just like you can do from the Windows task manager. Then there is also xkill, which lets you just click on the window you want to kill without knowing the process name or ID. That's one feature I wish Windows had.

[MagicLess]

Appreciate it Capn. I figured Unix/Linux would have already adopted something like this (if it hadn't already had it since the beginning).

[Holy_COW]

Dload process explorer (form sysinternals, now from microsoft) go to the process, right click, choose "suspend"

it basically freezes the program, ram stays on current usage but cpu and time "freezes" for the program...

[MagicLess]

Dload process explorer (form sysinternals, now from microsoft) go to the process, right click, choose "suspend"

it basically freezes the program, ram stays on current usage but cpu and time "freezes" for the program...

This thing is ****ing awesome. Thanks Holy_COW.

[Holy_COW]

This thing is ****ing awesome. Thanks Holy_COW.

You're welcome

Those tools from sysinternals are great, they have one for handles, blocked files, tcp ports+app name details, etc...
Some of them are old as they have not been updated (thanks microsoft...) but if you can, download the whole pack and try them, I bet you will find a couple of them very useful

[MagicLess]

Ports+apps will be good if I can port forward for FAH.

Though on a sad note I stopped a program, resumed it, and after clicking on it I went straight to BSOD.

[Holy_COW]

well it depends a lot what you freeze, if you suspend a critical OS service (like svchost, services.exe or kernel or a thing like that) a BSOD or full hang is almost guaranteed.

Try it with notepad or a game, or word, and you will see they can be freeze and then resumed.

[MagicLess]

well it depends a lot what you freeze, if you suspend a critical OS service (like svchost, services.exe or kernel or a thing like that) a BSOD or full hang is almost guaranteed.

Try it with notepad or a game, or word, and you will see they can be freeze and then resumed.

It was with only one program: Grand Theft Auto IV. It has a habit of consuming one full core when it's in the backround, which is why I wanted to freeze it. Losing one core with FAH causes a disproportional loss to performance. 1/8th loss of CPU usage seemed to causes FAH to run two to ten times slower.

[Holy_COW]

what Os you're on? win7?
I have tried the suspend in XP and Vista, dont recall using it yet on win7...

Well other option may be that a game with DirectX and direct calls may not be "freezable" (at least with this tool) I do have used it with word/outlook and stuff like that... hmm now you made me curios about this lol, when I get home to my main pc i will fire a couple of games and try on win7 and let you know how it goes.

[MagicLess]

Yes, I am using Window 7. More precisely Win7 Pro 64-bit.

[Holy_COW]

More info on suspend function:
SuspendThread Function (Windows)

Please note the Suspend WOW64 applications thread, if you're on a 64bit OS, maybe the game is 32bit running inside a WOW64 machine and caused the blue screen, since Process explorer its 32bit? (just guessing)

When I have a chance I will test it on my home on both 32 and 64bit apps and games...

[MagicLess]

Makes enough sense to me, since I don't know much about that kind of thing. Task Manager is saying it's a 32-bit game.