What are the names of the five tabs displayed at the top of the Resource Monitor?
This article is about the Microsoft Windows utility. For the generic software component, see System monitor. Show
Resource Monitor, a utility in Windows Vista and later, displays information about the use of hardware (CPU, memory, disk, and network) and software (file handles and modules) resources in real time.[1] Users can launch Resource Monitor by executing resmon.exe (perfmon.exe in Windows Vista). The Vista and later Resource Monitor heavily leverages the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) facilities introduced in Windows 7;[2] the counter setup (event tracing session) used by the Resource Monitor can provide logging as well.[3] Features[edit]The Resource Monitor window includes five tabs:[4]
Ways to start the application[edit]
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We often wonder why our workaday computer chores seem to take just as long as they ever did, despite the fact that hardware is generally more reliable and more powerful than ever. The answer to this apparent riddle comes in the form of McFedries' law of computing codependence: The increase in software system requirements is directly proportional to the increase in hardware system capabilities. For example, imagine that a slick new chip is released that promises a 10% speed boost; software designers, seeing the new chip gain wide acceptance, add 10% more features to their already bloated code to take advantage of the higher performance level. Then another new chip is released, followed by another software upgrade—and the cycle continues ad nauseum as these twin engines of computer progress lurch codependently into the future. So, how do you break out of the performance deadlock created by the immovable object of software code bloat meeting the irresistible force of hardware advancement? By optimizing your computer to minimize the effects of overgrown applications and to maximize the native capabilities of your hardware. Of course, it helps if your operating system gives you a good set of tools to improve and monitor performance, diagnose problems, and keep your data safe. Windows XP came with a decent set of client tools, Vista improved on them (although not with anything radically new or earth shattering), and Windows 7 stays the course. Computer Performance Monitor CapabilitiesPerformance optimization is a bit of a black art in that every user has different needs, every configuration has different operating parameters, and every system can react in a unique and unpredictable way to performance tweaks. That means if you want to optimize your system, you have to get to know how it works, what it needs, and how it reacts to changes. You can do this by just using the system and paying attention to how things look and feel, but a more rigorous approach is often called for. To that end, the next few sections take you on a brief tour of Windows 7's performance monitoring capabilities. Viewing Your Computer's Performance RatingLike Windows Vista, Windows 7 tailors certain aspects of itself to the capabilities of the system on which you're installing it. For example, the Windows 7 interface changes depending on the graphics hardware on the machine, with low-end machines getting the Windows 7 Basic theme, and high-end GPUs getting the full Aero treatment. But Windows 7 also scales other aspects up or down to suit its hardware home. With games, for example, Windows 7 enables certain features only if the hardware can support them. Other features scaled for the computer's hardware are TV recording (for example, how many channels can it record at once?) and video playback (for example, what is the optimal playback size and frame rate that doesn't result in dropped frames?). The tool that handles all of this, not only for Windows 7 itself but also for third-party programs, is the Windows System Assessment Tool, or WinSAT. This tool runs during setup, and again whenever you make major performance-related hardware changes to your system. It focuses on four aspects of computer performance: graphics, memory, processor, and storage. For each of these subsystems, WinSAT maintains a set of metrics stored as an assessment in XML format. Windows 7 needs to examine only the latest assessment to see what features the computer can support. Note, too, that third-party programs can use an application programming interface that gives them access to the assessments, so developers can tune program features depending on the WinSAT metrics. Five metrics are used:
In addition to WinSAT, Windows 7 comes with the Performance Rating tool that rates your computer based on its processor, RAM, hard disk, regular graphics, and gaming graphics. The result is the Windows Experience Index base score. To launch this tool, select Start, type performance, and then click Performance Information and Tools in the search results. In the Performance Information and Tools window, if you see a button named Rate this Computer, click that button to run the initial assessment. As you can see in Figure 6.1, Windows 7 supplies a subscore for each of the five categories and calculates an overall base score. You can get a new rating (for example, if you change performance-related hardware) by clicking the Re-run the Assessment link. FIGURE 6.1 Windows 7 calculates a Windows System Performance Rating based on five categories. Interpreting the ratings is a bit of a black art, but I can tell you the following:
Computer Performance Monitoring with Task Manager The Task Manager utility is excellent for getting a quick overview of the current state of the system. To get it onscreen, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to open the Windows Security screen and then click the Start Task Manager link. Tip The Processes tab, shown in Figure 6.2, displays a list of the programs, services, and system components currently running on your system. (By default, Windows 7 shows just the process you have started. To see all the running processes, click Show Processes from All Users.) The processes display in the order in which they were started, but you can change the order by clicking the column headings. (To return to the original, chronological order, you must shut down and restart Task Manager.) FIGURE 6.2 The Processes tab lists your system's running programs and services. In addition to the image name of each process, the user who started the process, and a description of the process, you see two performance measures:
Tip The Performance tab, shown in Figure 6.3, offers a more substantial collection of performance data, particularly for that all-important component, your system's memory. FIGURE 6.3 The Performance tab lists various numbers related to your computer's memory components. The graphs show you both the current value and the values over time for the CPU usage (the total percentage of CPU resources that your running processes are using) and the physical memory usage. Below the graphs are various numbers. Here's what they mean:
Here are two notes related to these values that will help you monitor memory-related performance issues:
In all of these situations, the quickest solution is to reduce the system's memory footprint by closing either documents or applications. For the latter, use the Processes tab to determine which applications are using the most memory and shut down the ones you can live without for now. The better, but more expensive, solution is to add more physical RAM to your system. This decreases the likelihood that Windows 7 will need to use the paging file, and it enables Windows 7 to increase the size of the system cache, which greatly improves performance. If you're not sure which process corresponds to which program, display the Applications tab, right-click a program, and then click Go to Process. Task Manager displays the Processes tab and selects the process that corresponds to the program. Using the Resource Monitor Windows 7 comes with a new tool for monitoring your system yourself: the Resource Monitor. (It's actually a standalone (and revamped) version of the Resource Monitor from Windows Vista.) You load this tool by selecting Start, typing monitor, and then clicking Resource Monitor in the search results. Figure 6.4 shows the window that appears. FIGURE 6.4 The new Resource Monitor enables you to monitor various aspects of your computer. The Resource Monitor is divided into five tabs:
Using the Performance MonitorThe Performance Monitor provides you with real-time reports on how various system settings and components are performing. You load it by selecting Start, typing performance, and then pressing Enter to choose Performance Monitor in the search results. In the Performance Monitor window, open the Monitoring Tools branch and click Performance Monitor. Performance Monitor displays real-time data using performance counters, which are measurements of system activity or the current system state. For each counter, Performance Monitor displays a graph of recent values over a time space (the default time space is 100 seconds), as well as statistics such as the average, maximum, and minimum values over that span. By default, Performance Monitor doesn't show any counters. To add one to the Performance Monitor window, follow these steps:
The counter appears at the bottom of the window (see Figure 6.6). A different-colored line represents each counter, and that color corresponds to the colored lines shown in the graph. Note, too, that you can get specific numbers for a counter—the most recent value, the average, the minimum, and the maximum—by clicking a counter and reading the boxes just below the graphs. The idea is that you should configure Performance Monitor to show the processes you're interested in (page file size, free memory, and so on) and then keep it running while you perform your normal chores. By examining the Performance Monitor readouts from time to time, you gain an appreciation of what is typical on your system. If you run into performance problems, you can check Performance Monitor to see whether you've run into any bottlenecks or anomalies. FIGURE 6.6 Use Performance Monitor to keep an eye on various system settings and components. Performance Monitor has a few new features that make it easier to use and a more powerful diagnostics tool:
Data Collector SetsA data collector is a custom set of performance counters, event traces, and system-configuration data that you define and save so that you can run and view the results any time you need them. You can configure a data collector set to run for a preset length of time or until the set reaches a specified size. You can also configure a data collector to run on a schedule. For example, you could run the data collector every hour for 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This enables you to benchmark performance and analyze the results not only intraday (to compare performance at different times of the day) but also interday (to see whether performance is slowing over time). ReportsThis section holds the reports created by each data collector set. These are .blg files, and you can see the results by clicking the report and then switching to Sysmon view (click the Chart icon in the toolbar). Alternatively, open the folder that contains the report file in Windows Explorer (the default save location is %SystemDrive%perflogs) and doubleclick the report file. About the authorPaul McFedries is the president of Logophilia Limited, a technical writing company, and has been writing computer books since 1991. McFedries is the author or coauthor of more than 60 books that have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. He is also the proprietor of Wordspy.com, a website described as "the word lover's guide to new words," which tracks new words that become part of the English language. Tuning Windows 7's performance Windows 7 performance monitoring tools Optimizing Windows 7 startup performance for energy efficiency Optimizing Windows 7 application performance Improving Windows 7 performance by optimizing the hard disk Windows 7 virtual memory performance optimization Printed with permission from Sams Publishing. Copyright 2009. Microsoft Windows 7 Unleashed by Paul McFedries. For more information about this title and other similar books, please visit www.pearson.com. Dig Deeper on MSP technology services
What are four categories tracked Resource Monitor?Resource Monitor, a utility in Windows Vista and later, displays information about the use of hardware (CPU, memory, disk, and network) and software (file handles and modules) resources in real time.
What is Resource Monitor on my computer?Resource Monitor (Resmon) is a system application included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows that allows users to look at the presence and allocation of resources on a computer.
Where in Resource Monitor are graphs of resources displayed?The bar graph of memory use is self-explanatory, and so are the graphs that are shown on the right side of the Resource Monitor window.
What does the Overview tab provide a quick view of in Resource Monitor?Taking a look around
As you can see in Figure A, the Overview tab displays basic system resource usage information from the four main tabs: CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network.
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