Windows XP Performance Monitor

Windows XP allows you to monitor the system and network performance far beyond the
simple display of the Task-Manager.

To work with the Performance Monitor, select in the Control - Panel :
"Administrative Tools" :

Select :
Performance :

The "System Monitor" shows the charts, you can also create Log-files and trigger Alerts.

Most internal processes of Windows XP track their performance by a "counter", either showing
a total or a throughput value. These counters are listed at the button and also plotted over time.

To add to monitor an additional item, select to add a "counter" , using the '+' sign in the toolbar :

	There is a very long list of counters in Windows XP. To make it easy to identify, they are listed by "Performance Object".
	Once you selected the object, select the counter to be monitored. You can select performance values, ( like : "Bytes Received / sec" )or a count for error-conditions (like: "Error Access Permissions"). You can click on the button :"Explain" to get more information about a specific counter. .
	To select a counter, highlight the counter and use the button "Add"

	If you track a lot of counters, you may want to adjust the display to get a better identification of the counters. Right-Click anywhere on the Performance Monitor and select : to display the "Properties " Tab: General Define the type of the View (usually a Graph), Display elements, Report and histogram data and select the Appearance. By default, the values will be updated automatically every 1 second. You can select a larger time difference to have the display for a longer time.
	tab : Source Defines, whether to display the current system activities or the data from a Log-file stored on the disk
	tab : Data The list of selected Counter. Here you can change to display the counter : - different colors - different Line width (=thickness) - for 1-dot line-thickness : Line Style
	tab : Graph Allows to customize the graph with a title, grids and to define the range of the vertical scale
	tab : Appearance allows to customize colors and fonts

In the drawing, you may have some counter with very small values, displayed
close to the 0-value, or above the maximum display values of 100
(Like the yellow line in the above chart).

You can adjust this in the Properties, tab : data
by selecting a non-Default Scale-value.

The system takes the measured value (like for the Bytes transmitted/sec in the above chart:
785800) , multiply it with the scale-value (example : 0.0001 ) and display the result
(example: 78.5) in the chart (example : the blue line ).

With a right-click, you can select to save such a Performance Monitor chart as an HTM-file.

If you do not like to watch the screen to catch a special event, you can use Performance Monitor
to store a Log-file, which you can display and evaluate later.