CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [285]
Figure 17-28 Task Manager
Not only does Task Manager tell you how much CPU and RAM usage is taking place, it also tells you what program is using those resources. Let’s say your system is running slowly. You open up Task Manager and see that your CPU usage is at 100 percent. You then click on the Processes tab to see all the processes running on your system. Click on the CPU column heading to sort all processes by CPU usage to see who’s hogging the CPU (Figure 17-29)! To shut off a process, just right-click the process and select End Process. Many times a single process opens many other processes. If you want to be thorough, click End Process Tree to turn off not only the one process but also any other processes it started.
Figure 17-29 CPU usage
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NOTE Every program that runs on your system is composed of one or more processes.
Task Manager is also a great tool for turning off processes that are hogging memory. Let’s say you’re experiencing a slowdown, but this time you also notice your hard drive light is flickering nonstop—a clear sign that you’ve run out of memory and the page file is now in use. You go into Task Manager and see no available system memory—now you know the page file is in use! To make the PC run faster, you have to start unloading programs—but which ones? By going into the Processes tab in Task Manager, you can see exactly which processes are using the most memory. Just be careful not to shut down processes you don’t recognize; they might be something the computer needs.
Performance Console
Task Manager is good for identifying current problems, but what about problems that happen when you’re not around? What if your system is always running at a CPU utilization of 20 percent—is that good or bad? Windows 2000 and XP provide a tool called the Performance console that logs resource usage so you can track items such as CPU and RAM usage over time. Performance is an MMC console file, PERFMON.MSC, so you call it from Start | Run or through the Performance icon in Administrative Tools. Use either method to open the Performance console (Figure 17-30). As you can see, there are two nodes, System Monitor and Performance Logs and Alerts.
Figure 17-30 Performance console
Objects and Counters To begin working with the Performance console, you need to understand two terms: object and counter. An object is a system component that is given a set of characteristics and can be managed by the operating system as a single entity. A counter tracks specific information about an object. For example, the Processor object has a counter, %Processor Time, that tracks the percentage of elapsed time the processor uses to execute a non-idle thread. Many counters can be associated with an object.
System Monitor System Monitor gathers real-time data on objects such as memory, physical disk, processor, and network, and displays this data as a graph (line graph), histogram (bar graph), or simple report. Think of System Monitor as a more detailed, customizable Task Manager. When you first open the Performance console, the System Monitor shows data in graph form. The data displayed is from the set of three counters listed below the chart. If you want to add counters, click the Add button (the one that looks like a plus sign) or press CTRL-I to open the Add Counters dialog box. Click the Performance object drop-down list and select one of the many different objects you can monitor. The Add Counters