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RSS feedsIf you’ve recently upgraded to Windows Vista, you may find yourself on uncharted ground when it comes to troubleshooting.
On the surface, much seems the same as Windows XP, but delving deeper reveals some significant architectural differences between the two operating systems.
Fortunately, Vista has improved troubleshooting and maintenance tools compared to XP. But the downside is that you must know where to find and how to use them – something we intend to remedy in this feature.
Perhaps the biggest new addition is the Reliability and Performance Monitor. Comprising three main sections – Monitoring Tools, Data Collector Sets and Reports – it provides a comprehensive overview of how your system’s performing, as well as tools not previously included in a Windows operating system.
Reliability and performance
First, make sure you’re logged on to an account with administrator privileges
and right-click the Computer entry in the Start menu then choose ‘Manage’, or
simply type compmgmt.msc into the Search box.
This brings up the Computer Management console where most of the important tools reside. In this console, expand the menu branch under System Tools labelled Reliability and Performance Monitor. Here you’ll find the Resource Overview, which provides a very detailed hierarchical summary of how your system is being used.
At first glance, the Resource Overview may appear as little more than a glorified Task Manager: the main window shows a summary of key system performance metrics in graphical and textual forms.
At the top, the Resource Overview displays continuously updating graphs that depict CPU, Disk, Network and Memory performance, with each having its own pull-down section offering a more detailed report.
Clicking on any of the four graphs will open the corresponding section. For example, clicking on the CPU graph will bring up a list of running processes that should be familiar to those used to the Windows Task Manager, although a slightly different selection of columns is presented.
Where the old Task Manager’s Processes tab gives you a general overview of each running process – including, CPU utilisation and memory usage – the CPU section of the Reliability and Performance Monitor focuses solely on CPU-related information, providing more detail on each process, such as average and instantaneous CPU utilization.
To see how each process uses system memory, you must view the Memory section, which gives a detailed breakdown. The remaining sections give similar breakdowns for disk and network usage by process, so you can see the impact any individual process has on the system.
If a particular program runs slowly, this information can be used to find out why and possibly how best to upgrade your PC to better cope. Perhaps more memory would help, or maybe it’s the hard drive that is slowing your system down – the Reliability and Performance monitor will help you determine which is the case.
The information provided is more detailed than that from the standard performance monitor (also found in XP). For example, for any given process, it’s now possible to see which file on disk is being accessed at any moment in time.
Network usage is revealed in a similar way, process by process. Connections to network names or IP addresses can be viewed as they happen. This could enable you to detect malware such as Trojans connecting to unknown servers.
While monitoring the Memory section, you can see how each process uses it and perhaps detect any leaks; monitoring the number of Hard Faults/sec will show how frequently a program needs to access the swap file, which could show if adding more memory would speed up applications.
See also:
The sheer number of Vista's tools can be overwhelming. We look at some of the best ones 27 Sep 2007
It may boast an ‘Ultimate’ edition, but there are still some essential utilities for Vista users 03 Aug 2007All Software Applications
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