PC Pitstop is the undisputed leader in PC diagnostics. Our running process library is culled from our database of over 100 million PC diagnostics and scans.

Tip from the PitCrew

Every process running on your computer takes up CPU cycles and valuable memory. For optimal PC performance and resource utilization, you should be aware of every process on your computer. PC Pitstop designed this process library to help you know which processes are worthwhile and others that slow system performance.

Furthermore, perhaps the quickest and most straight forward method to detect malware is through a running process analysis.

pstores.exe (Protected Storage)

This program has not been seen on any systems tested at PC Pitstop in the past week.

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PC Pitstop Analysis

PSTORES.EXE - Provides encrypted file storage functions to programs such as Microsoft Outlook. PSTORES is started automatically whenever a program requests protected storage functionality. It will continue to run even after all programs have stopped requesting services, but generally does not cause any load on the system when idle.

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Recommendation

pstores.exe is an essential part of Windows and required for Windows to work properly. It should never be disabled.

PC Pitstop recommends WinPatrol Plus for monitoring all of the background activity on your PC. WinPatrol Plus provides a easy to understand descriptions of over 15,000 processes and programs.

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Identification

In addition to the file name, pstores.exe, the following version information is used to identify the file. If the file does not match this information, it may be a different file. To ensure the file is absolutely correct, run a free and comprehensive scan.

Vendor contains:	Microsoft
Product contains:	Windows

To view version information with Windows Explorer, right-click the file and click Properties, Version.

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MD5 Hashes

MD5 hashes is the way that computers can define the uniqueness of a file. Anti malware vendors frequently use this technique to detect and clean malware. It is common for a program to have multiple MD5 hashes as the developers create newer versions of the program. For the program called pstores.exe, we have detected 2 different MD5 hashes. Click on a hash to research the hash in Google.

MD5 Report Summary
Program Name	MD5 Count
pstores.exe	2

#	MD5	Size
1	0xf02f97b25cbd1b313911cf429eff287d	84752 bytes
2	0x9540e610e33dd94ebc58c12315c20120	81680 bytes

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PC Pitstop Database Comparisons

Every week, we update our information about the running programs identified during the previous week's testing. This program has not been seen on any systems tested at PC Pitstop in the past week.

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