Windows XP Hacks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Hack 91 Track System Performance with the Performance Console

Before you can hack away at things to speed up
your computer, you should know how to monitor system performance in
the first place. As a power user, you'll like
knowing what's causing those slow-downs and blips in
performance. The Performance Console is a great
hacker's tool for monitoring and tracking resources
of all kinds.

Computers get faster every year, but
somehow we still end up sometimes waiting around for them to finish a
task.

To figure out what's slowing your computer down and
get to the root of the problem, use the Performance Console
(perfmon) to track and graph the activities of
Windows XP and its components. First, I'll show you
how to set up a log, and then I'll give you some
ways to put the console logs to good use.

11.2.1 Setting Up Your Logs

Choose Start
Run and type perfmon.
You'll see the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), with
the Performance titlebar. In the left pane, click System Monitor to
see a graph of your current system performance, including your
processor, memory, and disk. You can use the toolbar buttons to
configure the graph data and format. This graph is useful for seeing
what's going on now, but it's
useless for looking at the long-term picture.

To create log files of your system's performance,
click Performance Logs and Alerts in the left pane of the MMC. You
can create counter logs (with the values of performance indicators,
measured on a regular basis), trace logs (with the values of
performance indicators when something happens, such as a program
crash), and alerts (an action for Windows to take when a counter hits
a specified value). Log files stored in text format contain one line
per observation, with values separated by either commas or tabs, and
are usually stored in the C:\Perflogs folder.
You can import these log files into a spreadsheet or database for
analysis, reporting, and graphing. SQL and binary (nontext) log file
formats are also available. (See article Q296222 in the Microsoft
KnowledgeBase for how to log data directly to an SQL database.)

Create a counter log by right-clicking Counter Logs in the left pane
and choosing New Log Settings from the shortcut menu. Specify the
statistics you want to log by clicking Add Counters on the General
tab of the Properties sheet for the log (see Figure 11-1). A nice feature of this utility is that you
can choose whether to monitor the local computer or another computer
on your LAN. Don't add more than a few counters, or
your log file will grow quickly and be confusing to analyze. To
select a counter, first select the performance object (i.e., the part
of the computer system you want to monitor, such as memory or disks),
and then choose counters from the list.

Figure 11-1. Creating or editing a performance log

Set the interval to the frequency you'd like to
sample the data. Don't choose too frequent an
interval, or your log file will take over your entire hard disk
(start with once a minute). On the Log Files tab, specify the file
type, name, and location. If you plan to import this file into a
spreadsheet or database program, choose Text File (comma-delimited)
for the type. On the Schedule tab, specify when the log start and
stopsmanually, or automatically on a schedule.

The Performance console itself can slow down your computer considerably. Run it only when you need it, and don't set the logging interval to be too short. Set logs to stop after a day or two; otherwise, they'll run until your hard disk fills up.

11.2.2 What to Watch

These counters are often worth
logging:

\Memory\Pages\sec

Number of pages read from disk or written to disk when Windows runs
out of memory. Swapping information to and from the disk can slow
down your system significantly. Consider adding more memory.

PhysicalDisk\Avg. Disk Queue Length

Number of read and write requests are waiting for the disk to
respond. High numbers indicate that a faster disk drive would speed
up performance.

PhysicalDisk\% Disk Time

Percentage of the time the disk was busy. This is another indicator
of a slow or overloaded disk.

Processor\% Processor Time

Percentage of the time the processor was busy with all types of
processes. This counter can tell you whether delays are caused by an
overloaded CPU.

11.2.3 Viewing Performance Logs

With
the System Monitor in the MMC,
you can view a log as a graph. Click System Monitor in the left pane
of the MMC window and click the View Log Data icon on its toolbar.
Add the log file to the list. When you are looking at the graph,
click the Properties button on the toolbar to change how the graph
looks.

To look at the contents of a comma-separated
(.cvs) log file in Excel or your default
spreadsheet program, double-click the filename in Windows Explorer.
Excel may complain that the file is still open (since the Performance
Console is still appending information to it); click Notify to see
what's in the file so far. In Excel, you can
analyze, graph, and print the counters.

11.2.4 Performance Alerts

Create
an alert to let you know when a
counter exceeds a specified value. For example, the Performance
Console can let you know when the idle processor time drops below
10%. Right-click Alerts in the left pane of the MMC window and choose
New Alert Settings to create a new alert. Add one or more counters,
and specify the limit (upper or lower) beyond which Windows should
take action. On the Action tab, specify what Windows does when the
alert occurs: specifically, you can have it add a note to an event
log or run a program.

Margaret Levine Young