Linux “Top” command for Windows Powershell?

Question

I am looking for a PowerShell cmdlet that can provide similar functionality to the Linux Top app. Something that refreshes at some given interval and displays the process list with CPU % util.

I have seen scripts that list CPU % utilization in a loop but something like top would be way more handy as we have setup SSH/Powershell access for management (I still prefer a putty shell!)

Answer 1

There's nothing that I know of that in single cmdlet form, but like you say, scripts are easy to right to emulate top.

while (1) { ps | sort -desc cpu | select -first 30; sleep -seconds 2; cls }

Answer 2

I'm not aware of a PowerShell cmdlet that provides the functionality. There is a freeware external command that does about what you want. Look at Mark Russinovich's pslist from the Sysinternals suite. Pslist provides a list of executing processes in a configurable view. "pslist -s" provides the sort of continuous update you want, with a default refresh rate of once per second.

I prefer to use Mark's GUI Process Explorer, but pslist is handy for console sessions.

The Sysinternals home page is here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals

Dennis