Computer Monitoring Software Does What?...

Computer monitoring software will help to track your computer system performance real time.

One of these computer monitoring software is Task Manager.

It comes with your Windows XP Operating system and gives you information about your computer.

Task Manager will allow you to monitor your applications, processes, performance and networking.

• How to Monitor Programs.
  • To monitor applications and processes that are currently running on your computer.
  • Provides information about the processes, including the memory usage of each one.
  • Provides statistics about the memory and processor performance and network usage.
  • You can access the Task Manager several ways.
    • If the Welcome screen is enabled, pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE activates Task Manager.
    • By pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE at any other time, you can access the Windows Security dialog box and select Task Manager.
    • By placing the mouse pointer on the Windows Task (bottom) bar of the desktop screen and press the right mouse button, select Task Manager.
  • The computer monitoring software Task Manager Dialog box has four tabs: Applications, Processes, Performance, and Networking.
    • The Applications tab.
      • To stop a program from running (End Task).
      • To switch to a program and bring the program into foreground (Switch To).
      • To start a program (New Task).
      • The bottom shows the number of processes that are currently running, the CPU usage, and memory usage.

• How to Monitor Processes.
  • The Processes tab.
    • Shows you the processes, the users running each process, and the CPU and memory usage for each process that is running.
    • Default columns.
      • Image Name - The name of the process.
      • User name - The name of the user that the process is running under.
      • CPU Usage - The percentage of time the threads of the process used the processor since the last update. If a process is consuming a large amount of processor time over a long period, the process might be having trouble. Try closing the application using the computer monitoring software Application Tab.
      • Memory Usage - The amount of memory (in kilobytes) used by the process. It displays the total amount of physical and virtual memory used by an application. If an application is using too much memory, try closing the application and restarting it.
    • You can add additional performance measures in this computer monitoring software to those that are shown by default. On the top, select "View" and select "Select Columna".
      • CPU Time - The total processor time (in seconds) used by the process since it was started.
      • Base Priority - The order in which threads are scheduled for the processor. You can change the priority by right-clicking the process and select "Set Priority".
      • Non-paged Pool - The amount of memory (in kilobytes) that is used by a process; operating system memory that is never paged (moved from memory) to disk.
      • Paged Pool - The amount of system-allocated virtual memory (in kilobytes) used by a process; virtual memory that can be paged to disk. Paging is the moving of infrequently used data from RAM to the paging file on the hard disk.
      • Page Faults - The number of times that data had to be retrieved from the page file on the hard disk for this process. Too many page faults often indicate that you need more physical memory.
        • Note - This computer monitoring software will inform you when your RAM memory is running out as your page faults start to increase.
      • Peak Memory Usage - The maximum amount of physical memory resident in a process since it started.
      • Thread Count - The number of threads running in the process. This column can be useful for troubleshooting multithreaded applications.

  
  

• How to Monitor System Performance of this Computer Monitoring Software.
  • The Performance Tab.
    • To see a current overview of system performance that includes information about the CPU, physical memory, and virtual memory.
    • The following are the fields displayed by default:
      • CPU Usage - The percentage of time that the processor is busy. If this value runs continuously over 80 percent, you probably see a notable improvement in performance if you upgrade your processor.
      • CPU Usage History - The percentage of time that the processor is running a thread other than the idle thread shown over time.
      • PF Usage - The amount of virtual memory used (in MB).
      • Page File Usage History - The amount virtual memory used, shown over time.
      • Total: Handles - The number of object handles in the tables of all processes. A handle represents a specific input/output (I/O) instance of a thread.
      • Threads - The number of running threads, including one idle thread per processor. A thread is an object within a process that runs program instructions.
      • Processes - The number of active processes including the idle process. A process can have multiple threads, each of which can have multiple handles.
      • Physical Memory (K) Total - The amount of physical RAM installed in the computer.
      • Available - The amount of physical memory available to processes.
      • System Cache - The amount of physical memory released to the file cache on demand.
      • Commit Change: Total - The size of virtual memory in use by all processes.
      • Limit - The amount of virtual memory that can be committed to all processes without enlarging the paging file.
      • Peak - The maximum amount of virtual memory used in the session.
      • Paged - The size of the paged pool allocated to the operating system. The paged pool is data in physical memory that ca be written to the page file if Windows needs to make space in physical memory for other data.
      • Nonpaged - The size of the nonpaged pool allocated to the operating system. Windows cannot page all memory to a page file. Many threads created by the Windows kernel cannot be paged.
      • Kernal Memory (K): Total - The sum of the paged and nonpaged memory.

• How to Monitor Networking.
  • The Network Tab.
    • Displays a visual interpretation of the current network traffic on various net connections on the computer.
    • Gives you a quick snapshot of network availability on each connection.
    • Two options for controlling the way Task Manager displays the graph.
      • On the Options menu - select "Show Scale" to turn the vertical display of the scale on and off.
      • On the options menu - Select "Auto Scale" to turn the automatic scaling on and off. When off the graph always shows a range of 0 to 100 percent.
    • The detailed information of this computer monitoring software at the bottom of the tab displays current percent of network utilization and the theoretical link speed for each enabled adapter. Keep the following in mind:
      • On wired Ethernet connections, you can usually expect to see a peak utilization value of 60 to 80 percent.
      • On wireless connections, you can expect to see peak utilizations of 30 to 50 percent depending mostly on position of the wireless access point and structural interferences (such as walls, heating ducts, or other devices).
      • If you see utilization considerably below the peak values listed above, you should investicate the connection for potential problems.

In summary, you've covered the computer monitoring softare called Windows Task Manager.

You're able to access Task Manager several ways covering the four tabs on the Task Manager dialog box.

As you continue to load more software onto your system, your computer monitoring software will inform you when your RAM memory will run out of space.

As this happens, your paged file on the hard disk will be accessed more often which will affect your computer's performance.

So this computer monitoring software will continue to aid you in finding the bottlenecks to your computer's performance.

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