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Total Commander has been well known as a replacement for Windows Explorer and has been around for many years. Total Commander Ultima Prime (TCUP), is, on the other hand, a Total Commander plug-in that adds many more features in the form of other plug-ins and software bundled within it. We are using Total Commander along with the Ultima Prime add-on and you’ll be surprised at how much more we can do and how simpler things can get.
TCUP’s Process Manager
The Windows Task Manager is a rather simple utility, which shows the list of processes running on Windows. It does a satisfactory job, but TCUP has a very impressive process manager, which offers many more details on a selected process. 
The process manager in TCUP is far more feature packed than the one in Windows
To open the process manager, click on Plugins > Processes. Now double click on Processes again. A list of all the running processes is displayed. Double click on a process and you see information on everything from the CPU resources and RAM utilised to network connections being made. You can also view a graph of very interesting set of performance parameters for that process when you click on the Graph tab.
Running Applications As A Different User
If you’re running Windows on a standard user account without any administrative rights, it can be quite messy to log back in as Administrator. Total Commander gives you an easy window into the Administrator account to run an application. To do this, click on the file that you want to run, then click on NTFS > Run As. Enter the username and the password for that account. You can use this to use any account on your Windows system.
Burning Discs And Creating Images
Total Commander has integrated a nifty little CD / DVD burning software that will also let you create images out of files and folders. Click on the Network Neighborhood icon, which will open the list of features in TCUP. Double click on CD / DVD Burning. Choose the type of disc you want to create by double clicking on it—Data CD/DVD / Video DVD / Audio CD. You can also choose create an ISO of the data. Drag and drop the data to be recorded from the opposite pane into the CD / DVD burning pane. Double click the Burn Media menu item.
Snipping Menus To Your Liking
Adding features and add-ons to Total Commander has definitely cluttered the interface and more confusing than the original TC. Fortunately, changes can be made to the menus and the interface can be given some colour. To edit the menus, click on Configuration > Menu > Main Menu. Click on English if you want the default simple menu without any links to any of the additional features. You can also edit the menu by adding or removing any extra menus by clicking the Edit button. The POPUP at the beginning denotes the main menu, which bifurcates into MENUITEMS. Delete all the unnecessary menus by deleting these lines. Make sure you make a backup of the files in the LANGUAGE folder in your Total Commander folder, just in case anything goes wrong while editing the files.
Turning Off The Monitor Through TCUP
Total Commander allows you turn off the monitor on demand similar to Windows Power Management. This can be done by clicking on Power > Turn off monitor. You can also turn off the PC completely or send it into hibernation or standby through the same menu.
Accessing Registry And Startup Items
Any changes to the Windows registry requires users to use the Windows Registry Editor which requires significant browsing and searching, before you find the key that you’ve been looking for. The most important keys in Windows are generally the ones which start programs when Windows boots or when a particular user logs in. While you can still use it to view the entire registry, there is an option in the main menu to view the Autorun items. Double-click on Autorun. Now enter the category of applications and double-click on an item to stop it from running or you can even delete it by pressing the [Del] key.
Making TCUP Your Image Viewer
TCUP has the ability to generate thumbnails and previews for images so that should make it a pretty decent image viewer something like ACDSee. First browse to the folder with the images. Next, click on Show > Thumbnail View. All the files should be displayed as thumbnails now. 
The Preview panel in TC UP makes it a decent quick image viewer
Now, click on Show again and click Quick View Panel to have a large preview panel on the opposite pane. You can even use the controls available that let you rotate the image or add a few effects. Click Edit and an image editor that comes bundled with TCUP loads up. The same previewing feature can be used to preview videos and it even supports some unexpected formats such as PDFs!
When you aren’t viewing images or PDFs, then just point your mouse to a particular folder, and the preview pane is used to show a graph depicting the size and files in that folder.
Quick Searching Folders
TCUP can scan through your directory tree for a particular folder. With this, you can search for a folder without having to browse in and out of different branches. Click on Commands > CD Tree. This will start the scanning of the entire drive for folders. When the search is complete, start typing in the name of the folder you are looking for and Total Commander will pinpoint to it. Click OK and you will be directed right there!
Choosing A Suitable Menu
On installation, you might be asked by TCUP to enter a resolution that you are using for your screen. TC will automatically set the right icon size and layout so that it fits properly in your desktop resolution. Unfortunately the fitting isn’t always perfect when you select a large screen resolution and you notice tiny icons within huge if you choose it. To set standard resolution, click on Appearance > Resolution and check 1024 x 768. You will now get standard-sized icons on standard-sized buttons in the toolbar. Click on Appearance > Buttonbar and select one of the profiles—some of them have minimal layout while others are full fledged ones with all the utilities and features.
Tabs In A Windows Explorer Replacement
Total Commander has tab support, which is useful when you want to keep many folders open at the same time. To make use of the tab feature, right-click on the title bar for the folder or drive that is open, and click on Duplicate this tab to create a copy of the panel. You can now even copy from one tab to another by dragging and dropping a folder into the title of the tab.