When should you exclude a process from ProBalancing?

[Coldblackice]

When should you exclude a process from ProBalance (and why)?


What's the criteria for when a process should be excluded from PB? Obviously a top-focused program shouldn't get scaled back, like when playing game or movies or whatever. But what about otherwise? I'm asking because of the gray-area ones like:

Taskmgr.exe (Task Manager)
TeamViewer
AutoHotKey
Setpoint.exe || KHALMNPR.exe (Logitech SetPoint)
rundll32.exe
msseces.exe
Everything.exe (Everything Search)


Bonus:

Why are some programs excluded by default, like plugin-container.exe?

[Jeremy Collake]

That is a good question. First, do keep in mind the *numerous* criteria that also must be met before ProBalance ever acts. For instance, it won't act on the topmost/foreground application, or processes of non-normal priority class. Also, they must exceed the CPU thresholds. It even has some specialized rules for some common processes, and, of course, a hard-coded set of exclusions.

Thus, the answer is: Only if you see a problem, which is surely almost never. However, if you want to be extra sure process X never gets displaced in priority, then do exclude it.

As for why some are excluded by default - those are found in our own testing and through a decade of real-world use. It really wouldn't hurt anything if they weren't excluded, they just shouldn't be acted on. For instance, if explorer.exe is lowered in priority class, new processes it launches while 'restrained' may inherit that priority class, so we don't want to act on it. In other cases, one wouldn't want to act on blocking processes.

[Coldblackice]

Great, thanks.

And what are some "symptoms" of what might alert you to a program that shouldn't be getting PB'ed? Like how would you know if there were troubles? Would it be just general freezing/stuttering/lag?

[Jeremy Collake]

Well, basically any problems would be *very* rare. Another process (other than one ProBalance acted on) would need to make use of ALL the CPU, causing it to win for 'contention' of the CPU, causing stuttering. That is basically the only scenario in which ProBalance could have a negative impact and would need a manual exclusion. So, it's just taking precautions against that rare occurrence, but more just to make you feel better about ProBalance never interfering with a process.