CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [286]
Figure 17-31 Add Counters dialog box
Even with just three counters selected, the graph can get a little busy. That’s where one of my favorite System Monitor features shines. If you want the line of charted data from just one counter to stand out, select the counter in the list below the graph and then press CTRL-H. See how this trick makes the %Processor Time line stand out in Figure 17-32? Imagine how useful that is when you are monitoring a dozen counters.
Performance Logs and Alerts The Performance Logs and Alerts snap-in enables Windows to create a written record of just about anything that happens on your system. Do you want to know if someone is trying to log on to your system when you’re not around? The following procedure is specific to Windows XP, but the steps are nearly identical in Windows 2000.
To create the new event log, right-click Counter Logs and select New Log Settings. Give the new log a name—in this example, “Unauthorized Accesses.” Click OK, and a properties box for the new log appears, similar to that in Figure 17-33.
Figure 17-32 CTRL-H makes one set of data stand out
Figure 17-33 Creating a new performance log
To select counters for the log, click Add Counters and then select the Use local computer counters radio button. Select Server from the Performance object pull-down menu and then select Errors Logon from the list of counters; click Add and then click Close.
Back in the Properties box for your new log, click the Schedule tab and set up when you want this thing to start running—probably at the end of the workday today. Then select when it should stop logging—probably tomorrow morning when you start work. Click the Log Files tab to see where the log file will be saved—probably C:\PerfLogs—and make a note of the filename. The filename will consist of the name you gave the log and a number. In this example I named the new performance log “Unauthorized Accesses,” so the filename is Unauthorized Accesses_000001.blg.
When you come back in the morning, open the Performance console, select Performance Logs and Alerts, and then select Counter Logs. Your log should be listed on the right. The icon by the log name will be green if the log is still running or red if it has stopped. If it has not stopped, select it and click the Stop button (the one with the black square, circled in Figure 17-34).
Figure 17-34 Stopping the performance log
To view the log, open the Performance console, select System Monitor, change to Report view, and load the file as a new source by using the Properties box.
Reliability and Performance Monitor Windows Vista improves on the old Performance console dramatically with the Reliability and Performance Monitor. The Reliability and Performance Monitor still has a complete Performance console with all the objects and counters you see in Windows 2000 and XP, but it adds an excellent Resource Overview, a Reliability Monitor and a much more flexible way to use counters with Data Collector Set and Reports.
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NOTE A complete discussion of the Reliability and Performance Monitor is outside the scope of the CompTIA A+ objectives, but it’s an amazing tool!
You can open Reliability and Performance Monitor in Windows Vista by starting the Performance Information and Tools in the Administrative Tools Control Panel applet to get the Resource Overview dialog box (Figure 17-35). You can also open the tool by going to Start | Start Searching, typing perfmon.msc, and pressing ENTER.
Figure 17-35 Resource Overview in Vista
Think of the Resource Overview as an advanced Task Manager, giving details on CPU, hard drive, network, and memory usage. When you click on one of the four bars, you get details on exactly which processes are using those resources—a powerful tool when you suspect a program might be hogging something! Figure 17-36 shows the Network bar opened to reveal the processes using the network