Monitoring system performance in Windows 2000 Professional

by Jim Boyce | Mar 20, 2006 8:00:00 AM

Tags: Performance management, monitoring, monitoring system, Microsoft Windows, Jim Boyce, counter, performance, graph, Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Professional Tips Newsletter

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Takeaway: How's your system running? Do you want to keep better tabs on its performance? Learn how to use Windows 2000 Professional's Performance applet to monitor system performance. Jim Boyce shows us how to find and use it.

Whether you are trying to optimize performance of a particular system or identify potential problems, performance monitoring is a key step in both. The Performance applet in the Administrative Tools folder of Windows 2000 Professional lets you monitor system performance through the System Monitor node and configure performance logging and alerts through the Performance Logs and Alerts node.

To monitor system performance:

Click the System Monitor node.
Then, to add performance counters, click the Add button on the toolbar.
In the Add Counters dialog box, locate the object you want to monitor (such as Physical Disk or Processor) from the Performance Object drop-down list.
From the Select Counters list, choose the counter you want to monitor and click Add.
Repeat this step to add other counters as needed.

When you click Close, the counters you have selected appear in the performance graph. You can add or remove counters as necessary.

To remove a counter, click the counter in the list below the graph, then click the Delete button on the toolbar or the [Del] key on the keyboard.

If you are monitoring several counters, you might need to occasionally focus on a particular one. To do so, click the desired counter in the list below the graph and then click the Highlight button on the toolbar. The Performance console highlights the selected counter in the graph with a bold, white line.

On occasion you might need to analyze the graph a little more closely. In these situations you can freeze the display. Just click the Freeze Display button to stop updates. To update the graph while it is frozen, click the Update Data button. Click Freeze Display again when you want the graph to update dynamically again.