This afternoon, I had an experience which showed very clearly that Process Lasso is ineffective at preventing computer freezing.
I had just started the computer and was starting to browse the internet, when suddenly, everything froze except the mouse pointer. Everything was frozen for a long time - although after a minute or two, I did briefly hear some of the music that I had playing in the background. However, it didn't seem that the computer was going to unfreeze - at least not anytime soon, so I abruptly cut off the power and restarted the computer.
At some point - either before or after restarting the computer, I found that, according to Process Lasso, the culprit was AVG...which had been using 99% of the RAM! NINETY-NINE PERCENT! Within a few minutes, AVG was using 99% of RAM yet again, and I had to abruptly shut off the computer and restart it.
I then decided that enough was enough. Process Lasso wasn't stopping AVG, and AVG was going to keep suddenly using resources - rendering my computer useless - unless I could remove AVG - at least temporarily until I could figure out why AVG was acting so strange. So after the computer restarted, I uninstalled AVG, but just as it was about to finish uninstalling (or so it seemed), the computer froze YET AGAIN! I turned off the computer and restarted it again, and thankfully, AVG seemed to have been removed.
This whole incident was ridiculous. Process Lasso let a BACKGROUND PROCESS use 99% of the RAM! Nominally, it was using over 4 GB of RAM! ONE PROGRAM was using 4 GB of RAM! And yet, Process Lasso did NOTHING to prevent this from happening! The point of Process Lasso should be to PREVENT bottlenecks from taking place instead of automatically adjusting priorities, but IT DOESN'T DO THAT! A BACKGROUND PROCESS should not use anywhere EVEN CLOSE to 99% of RAM or CPU!
Most of the people that I've observed online seem to think positively of Process Lasso, but it seems odd as to why since the program clearly doesn't intervene effectively enough to prevent system freezing. It let a BACKGROUND PROCESS use 99% of the RAM. What does that say about the program's effectiveness?
Keep in mind that this is the only time that I've had issues with AVG before. Even though it did tend to have high resource usage - especially when starting the computer, it never even came close to using 99% of my RAM. None of my other programs have come so close, either - not even the foreground programs. I was even using the computer early this morning and had no problems with freezing. Something happened to cause AVG to start acting weird.
One might ask, "Well, if AVG is the problem, then why hate on Process Lasso?" I'm not saying that Process Lasso caused the system to freeze. I criticize Process Lasso because it is a program supposedly designed to stop system freezing, but it let ONE PROGRAM use all the memory and ultimately allowed the computer to freeze. Such a program should not allow such things to happen. They should PREVENT them from happening by not allowing programs - ESPECIALLY BACKGROUND PROCESSES - from using so many resources, but for some reason, it wasn't designed that way! And yet, people somehow consider it a helpful program. It's crazy. Basically, even if AVG were the problem, it shouldn't matter. Process Lasso should neutralize whatever problematic program exists, and if it doesn't, then that shows that it is ineffective at the task for which it was supposedly designed.
One might say, "Well, programs aren't infallible. They're bound to screw up once in a while." The point is that Process Lasso has virtually NEVER been effective. For one, Process Lasso didn't screw up just once. I had to restart my computer THREE TIMES IN A ROW because Process Lasso didn't stop AVG! Also, the only reason why I haven't had constant freezing in the past is because none of my programs, including AVG, ever did use excessive memory, and no, it was not because Process Lasso was in some way effective. In regards to CPU usage, programs have run at 100% for lengthy periods of time - even with multiple rules set - even with multiple requests to terminate the program (which are almost always unresponsive (another reason why Process Lasso is junk)). The occasionally high CPU usage has slowed down computer performance - but has not caused it to come to a halt (the computer would have acted the same even if I didn't have Process Lasso installed). Whatever the case, Process Lasso DID NOT STOP the high CPU usage of BACKGROUND PROCESSES. I have had occasional system slowdowns because of this - despite having Process Lasso, so it has proven to be ineffective with CPU. Despite having programs running with high CPU, I haven't had any issues where memory was maxed out - until today. If I had programs constantly using all my memory, then that would be further proof that Process Lasso was ineffective. But I didn't lack high memory usage because Process Lasso was doing its job. I just lucked out in that regard since my problematic programs seem to be mainly CPU hungry. I only have had to deal with CPU-related issues, and even those Process Lasso was NOT effectively handling. It could be seen as an illusion of, "Hey, no freezing, so I guess that means that the program's working, right?"
To be clear, I have felt that Process Lasso was ineffective since at least a year ago, and I didn't hold much confidence in it afterwards. I just felt like writing this as an even clearer example in which Process Lasso utterly failed to do its job. It failed to stop ONE BACKGROUND PROCESS from using 99% of RAM...THREE TIMES! This was not a one-time screw up. This was the result of an inherent flaw in Process Lasso's design. It should focus more on PREVENTING high resource usage - and not on adjusting program priorities. Sometimes that may help, but other times, that's just not enough. Process Lasso should focus on actually RESTRAINING processes - and capping resource usage - ESPECIALLY FOR BACKGROUND PROCESSES.
Anyway, I don't want to be bitter toward the developers of Process Lasso, so I hope that they can improve the program.
