Generating a Text List of Running Processes in PowerShell on Windows 7

In this quick guide, I'll show you how to generate a list of the running processes on a given Windows machine using PowerShell. I'm using Windows 7 in my example.

To run PowerShell, open up the run command and type powershell then hit enter. That will open up the command line for PowerShell commands to be ran.

To generate the list type in the following command:

Type: Get-Process >> ProcessList.txt

A breakdown:

Get-Process = gets the running processes of the machine. You can run this command by itself and it show the list within PowerShell or the command line.

>> = write stream points to where the file will be written. In this example it will write the output to whatever folder location you are currently running PowerShell in.

ProcessList.txt = the name of the file we are generating

You can change ProcessList.txt to whatever name you would like just make just it ends in .txt so you have a text file.

This can be useful if you want to analyze things that are running. You can print it out or save it and check it on another computer if you think you might be dealing with a virus process that is causing a slow down.