The Windows 7 Resource Monitor has a number of improvements over the Vista
version.
Whatever your previous experience, Resmon provides a quick and easy way to
troubleshoot unresponsive programs and bottlenecks.
Please humour me. If you are at a Windows 7 computer click on
the Start orb, launch first resmon and then perfmon. My point is
that in Windows 7 Microsoft has separated Vista's Reliability and
Performance monitor.
I also wanted to double-check that you wanted information about the Windows 7 Resource
Monitor, and not the Performance Monitor with its
Data Collector Sets.
Windows 7 Resource Monitor Tabs and Charts
The resources monitor contains four main tabs: CPU, Memory, Disk, and
Network. There is also an introductory tab called 'Overview'. Each
of these tabs also displays a chart pane, naturally,
you can apply the usual intuitive Windows methods to size and position
the charts to best display the data.
Filtering Processes: A new feature of Windows
7 resource monitoring is the ability to analyse
the resources consumed by specific processes. From the CPU tab you can
see check boxes next to the 'Image', just select those that you are
interested in. You can now see an orange bar representing the
selected images. The advantage of filtering is that the Resource
Monitor now displays any Associated Modules or Associated Handles. To
remove filtering from all tabs, right-click and clear the check box next to
an Image.
If your Windows 7 machine is running slower than expected, then you need to
find the bottleneck. My advice is to start with memory, if Free memory
is less then 50MB then this is the critical resource. However if you
have over 200MB Free or Standby memory then move on to troubleshooting the
CPU(s).
If the CPU usage is
constantly high, say over 80%, then home-in on which Image or process is
hogging the processor(s). Incidentally another new feature of this
monitor is that you can right-click an image
and 'End Process', just as you can in Task manager.
There is not much you can do about disk problems, other than load balance to
another disk, or else replace the
hardware. However, what you often find is that what seems like a disk
problem, is really shortage of memory. Another possibility is that the disk is
about to fail, in which case you should see loads of disk errors in the
system event log.
From the network tab you can see exactly what's taking the bandwidth.
Another factor with network problems is that they are likely to affect other
machines, thus if connecting to local server or the internet is slower than
usual check the same task but from a different computer.
These are typical sources of
bottlenecks, which Windows 7 Resource Monitor can help you troubleshoot.
Insufficient resources are available. For example, the
index service is using most of the memory.
A program monopolizes a particular resource. For example a
virus is tying-up the CPU.
High disk activity >80% check if reading or writing that's the
problem.
Wireless network, make sure that it's not automatically
downloading or loading videos from the internet.
In the Windows 7 Resource Monitor you can also troubleshoot by examining the
Process, Resource, Handle or Module associated with the CPU. You
can also drill down to the Memory, Disk and Network tabs to investigate
which processes are hogging those resources.
Guy Recommends: SolarWinds' Log & Event Management Tool
LEM will alert you to problems such as when a key
application on a particular server is unavailable. It can also
detect when services have stopped, or if there is a
network latency problem. Perhaps this log and event management
tool's most interesting ability is to take corrective action, for
example by
restarting services, or isolating the source of a maleware attack.
Yet perhaps the killer reason why people
use LEM is for its
compliance capability, with a little help from you, it will ensure that your organization complies with industry
standards such as CISP or FERPA. LEM is a really smart
application that can make correlations between data in different logs,
then use its built-in logic to take corrective action, to restart services,
or thwart potential security breaches - give LEM a whirl.
Load-balancing, move some of the load to another disk.
Research the true bottleneck. Beware low memory
masquerading as a disk problem.
New feature: Analyze Wait Chain for unresponsive programs: Click on the CPU Resource
Monitor tab. In the Image column, right-click the name of the
executable that you want to analyze, and then click: Analyze Wait
Chain.
Try perfmon -report and see which drivers need updating.
[Perfmon /report if you prefer]
Run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. I know this program is designed
to run BEFORE you install Windows 7, but it's unexpectedly useful
AFTER you have installed or upgraded.
If you like shortcuts, then you can use perfmon with the resmon switch -res
%windir%\system32\perfmon.exe -res or %windir%\system32\perfmon.exe /res
»
Summary of Windows 7 Resource Monitoring
Firstly, decide which tool is the best for your task, Resource Monitor to
display statistics quickly, or perfmon to record data over time. For
troubleshooting problems such as unresponsive programs: click on resmon's CPU
tab, then in the Image column, right-click the name of the
executable that you want to analyze, and then click: Analyze Wait Chain.
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Guy Recommends:
SolarWinds' NPM - Network Performance Monitor
SolarWinds' performance monitor is designed for detecting network outages,
making it easy to see what's working, and what needs your attention.
This utility guides you through creating network maps; it also helps
identifying whether the
root cause is faulty equipment, or resource overload. Give NPM a try.
