We all know that the longer you use your computer, the slower it will become. There are plenty of times when we experienced this slow PC syndrome and we have totally no idea which application is taking up all the resources. What if there is a way to track and monitor your applications and check which one is causing problem in your system?
We have previously covered how to use the Resource Monitor to track your application. In this article, we are going to show you a more powerful tool – Process Monitor, to get the job done.
Process Monitor is a very sophisticated application. It records every access to files, registry and it is a must-have tool if you are experiencing a system problem. It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or you are an advanced user, working with this application is much easier than you think.
In this tutorial I have used a free benchmark program, NovaBench, for creating the scenario. I have selected this utility because is free and I want some system activity. Of course you can use Process Monitor with other programs as well.
- Download Process Monitor
Download the latest version of Process Monitor (The latest version as of this post is 2.94)
- Execute the program
There is no installation required, but you need to run it as Administrator. Right click on the file and select “Run as administrator”
- Stop Capture Events.
By default, the utility starts capturing events the moment you run it. As we have to change some options before using the program, we need to stop it. Go to the File menu and uncheck “Capture Events“.
- Press Clear.
Click “Clear” to remove all the irrelevant entries in the window.
- Configure Profiling Events.
Go to the Options menu and select “Profiling Events…“. This will instruct the utility to capture the execution log of each process or program.
- Set Thread Profiling Options
Check “Generate thread profiling events“, and select “Every 100 milliseconds“:
- Select Capture Events
Now the program is ready to do its work. Go to the file menu and select “Capture Events” to start the process.
- Stop Capture Events.
When you are done with your test, go to the File menu again and uncheck “Capture Events“.
- Show An Activity Summary
Go to the Tools menu and select “Process Activity Summary“. This will display a summary of all the recorded log.
- Order by CPU usage.
A new window pops up. The program allows you to order by different measures. In this case, we are going to select CPU usage.
From here, we can see that the Microsoft Security Essential is using the most CPU resources. It also shows the total user CPU and kernel CPU usage.
- Order by RAM usage.
Alternatively, you can also sort the processes by its memory usage. This will allow you to see the application that is taking up the most memory instead of CPU resources.
What other tools do you use to monitor your computer?
I am an Engineer of Telecommunications that love computers. My first computer was a Commodore 16kb, about 25 years ago and since then I am always fighting computers problems. Please visit my entries and ask me about whatever problem you have, I will be pleased to help you.
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