I/O Priority Control

Users have been requesting I/O priority control ever since Vista was released. I always give the same answer - the I/O priority is derived from the calling thread's priority, which is in-turn derived from the process priority class (base priority) that Process Lasso's ProBalance adjusts. In other words, the CPU priority becomes the I/O priority.

This is what Microsoft recommends - simply changing the CPU priority of the calling thread or entire process. That is why they provided no direct way to change it, and why you see no way to change it in the popular Process Explorer utility from SysInternals (now arm of Microsoft).

However, since users wanted the control to set the I/O priority, I have implemented it. Since all of Process Lasso is low-level code, it was a quick and easy implementation. You will be disappointed to discover though that there are only TWO usable levels. That's right, two. Either it is Normal or Very Low. Those are your only options.

UPDATE: It appears that support exists for High and Low as well, though I'm still determining if this support is only superficial, or if it was added at some point. I will report more later.

You might as well set the priority class to Idle to achieve the same effect most of the time, but in rare situations where you desire the CPU priority to be different than the I/O priority, I have facilitated this starting in v4.09.06 beta. In v4.09.05 beta I show the I/O priorities, and the next beta I will allow manipulation of them. This next beta is likely coming within hours.

I wrote more on this here: http://www.bitsum.com/pl_io_priority.php