Greg Lorriman's Priority Launcher Dec 14, 2007
home [backto] Circa 2001

UPDATE (Jun 01 2008): Turns out an easier solution is to use Hstart, which will do this easily along with its other very useful options.

Priority Launcher is a small launcher program for Windows, written by Greg Lorriman in Delphi, to start programs with a specifiable process priority. Since the original domain from whence it came is no longer, I've uploaded the program along with a modified version that I compiled (including source for both). The following is from the original download location (now a defunct domain) via The Wayback Machine:

Priority Launcher version 1.1
Greg Lorriman 2001

Purpose : launch application with specified priority class (default "idle")

Reason : stops cpu hungry apps from making the rest of a win32 system sluggish thereby getting better user experience
and more practical/usable multi-tasking. Setting an app to "idle" usually has almost no effect on the app's performance
under normal conditions.

Example : Outlook Express takes time (and cpu) to switch to big news groups.
It makes the rest of the system almost unusable.

Usage : copy utility executable to windows folder. Modify shortcut to target app. Read readme.txt for more help.

History :

1.1 : fixes options

Sounded useful to me, especially on a single-core machine, so I downloaded the archived copy from the Wayback Machine. The original version only allowed for the following priority levels (from readme.txt) ...

Task Manager priority options in Windows Vista

i=idle (this is the default anyway)
h=high (bad news)
n=normal (why are you bothering?)
r=realtime (prepare for a cold reboot)

... which would have been just fine for older versions of Windows, but for modern versions there are more intermediate options that I'd like to be able to use (see screenshot from Windows Vista). You can use the command line START program to set the priority of launching programs, but that has its drawbacks.

So, I compiled a modified version with options for "Above Normal" and "Below Normal." I also changed the i=idle parameter to l=low to reflect the correct listing.

Parameters now available:

-l  low/idle (this is the default)
-b  below normal
-n  normal (why are you bothering?)
-a  above normal
-h  high
-r  realtime

The optional -w parameter remains (which waits until the program has loaded before setting the priority). I also recommend renaming the executable from PriorityLauncher.exe to something like pri.exe (PriorityLauncher is pretty long name for a launcher program). Send me an email if you have any questions or comments.

Original version (with source):
Download: [plgfgl11.zip] 14KB | md5sum: 53cd49432a2359e2954512e8ec6158de

Modified version (with source):
Download: [prl12.tgz] 27KB | md5sum: 949b7bda9155cff7cea1b9378d5eb0c6