Tracking Performance with System Monitor

System Monitor is a Windows 98 tool you can use to help determine the cause of problems on a local or remote computer by measuring the performance of hardware, software services, and applications. When you make changes to the system configuration, System Monitor shows the effect of your changes on overall system performance. You can also use System Monitor to justify hardware upgrades.

A new feature in Windows 98 is System Monitor’s ability to log. This is useful for measuring system performance over time. For example, logging memory consumption while using a specific application could be helpful.

Before making major configuration changes, use System Monitor to evaluate your current configuration; this can help you determine whether a particular system or network component is acting as a performance bottleneck.

System Monitor is not automatically installed with the Windows 98 Setup.

To install System Monitor

In Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs.
Click the Windows Setup tab.
Click System Tools, and then click Details.
Click System Monitor, and then click OK.

To run System Monitor

On the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click System Monitor.

To start logging

In System Monitor, click File, and then click Start Logging.
Type a file name for the log file, and then click Save.
On the File menu, click Stop Logging to stop logging.

To edit an item in a chart

In System Monitor, click Edit, and then click Edit Item.
Click Add Item, Remove Item, or Edit Item, and then make the changes you want.
Note
To view a definition of an item in the Item list, click the item, and then click Explain.
Click OK.
Note
You can edit only a chart that you are currently viewing.

To change the look of a chart

In System Monitor, click View, and then click Line Charts, Bar Charts, or Numeric Charts.
Note
You can edit only a chart that you are currently viewing.

To use System Monitor to monitor remote computers

Install the Microsoft Remote Registry service on your computer and on the computer you want to monitor, as described in Chapter 23, "System and Remote Administration Tools."
In System Monitor, click the File menu, and then click Connect.
Type the name of the computer you want to monitor, and then click OK.
Note
Monitoring a remote computer requires user-level security.

Configuring Performance Charts in System Monitor

System Monitor uses the dynamic data information in the registry to report on the state of processes. You can use System Monitor to do the following:

Monitor real-time system performance and compare it with historical performance to help identify trends over time.
Determine system capacity and identify bottlenecks.
Monitor the effects of system configuration changes.

To use System Monitor to track performance problems

In System Monitor, click the Edit menu, and then click Add Item.
In the Category list, click the resource that you want to monitor.
In the Item list, select one or more resources that you want to monitor.
To select more than one item, press CTRL while clicking the items that you want to select. To select several items in a row, click the first item, and then press and hold down SHIFT while clicking the last item.
Click Explain for more information about a selected resource.
Click OK. A performance chart of the resource is added to System Monitor.
To change the view of the data from a line chart to a bar chart or a numeric listing, click the related button on the toolbar.

System Monitor offers menu commands for configuring the charts:

To change the update interval, click the Options menu, and then click Chart.
To configure the color and scaling for a selected item, click the Edit menu, and then click Edit Item.
To control the display of the toolbar, status bar, and title bar, click the View menu, and then click Toolbar, Status Bar, or Hide Title Bar, respectively.

Identifying Performance Problems with System Monitor

If you want to use System Monitor effectively, you need to run it frequently to become familiar with what typical performance looks like for a standard configuration so that you can recognize performance problems when they appear in System Monitor.

To become well-acquainted with System Monitor, run it while you are doing your usual work under Windows 98. To do this, add the System Monitor icon to your desktop. Then run System Monitor and use commands on the View menu to remove the title bar or to force the window to be always on top.

Following are some general guidelines and key settings for using System Monitor in troubleshooting performance problems:

If you suspect an application might not be freeing memory when it finishes using it (sometimes called memory leaks), monitor the value of Kernel: Threads over time. This will indicate whether the application is starting threads and not reclaiming them. Windows 98 automatically removes such threads when the application closes, but if you identify a leak while the application is running, you might decide that you should restart the application periodically.
If the values for Memory Manager: Discards and Memory Manager: Page-outs indicate a great deal of activity, performance problems might be related to system memory stress. These values might indicate a need for more physical memory.
If a computer seems slow, check the values reported by Kernel: Processor Usage (%), by Memory Manager: Page Faults, and by Memory Manager: Locked Memory, as described in the following list:
- If values for Kernel: Processor Usage (%) are high even when the user is not working, check to see which application might be keeping it busy. To do this, press CTRL+ALT+DEL to see the list of tasks in the Close Program dialog box.
- If the values for Memory Manager: Page Faults are high, the applications being used might have memory needs beyond the computer’s capabilities.
- If the Memory Manager: Locked Memory statistics are continually a large portion of the Memory Manager: Allocated Memory value, inadequate free memory might be affecting performance. Also, you might be running an application that locks memory unnecessarily. (Locked memory indicates the portion of memory used that cannot be paged out.)

Summary of System Monitor Categories

System Monitor tracks functionality for the following categories:

Dial-Up Adapter
Disk Cache
File System
Kernel
Memory Manager
Microsoft Network Client
Microsoft Network Server file and printer sharing services

Note

Because System Monitor uses registry information, drivers can be written to report additional information in System Monitor. For more information about creating such drivers, see the Microsoft Windows 98 Device Development Kit.

Tables 26.6 through 26.12 describe the settings for the System Monitor categories.

Table 26.6 Dial-Up Adapter settings in System Monitor

Setting	Description

Alignment Errors	Serial port alignment errors.
Buffer Overruns	Serial port buffer overrun errors.
Bytes Received/Second	Number of bytes received per second.
Bytes Transmitted/Second	Number of bytes transmitted per second.
Connection Speed	Connection speed in bits per second.
CRC Errors	Number of frames with CRC errors.
Frames Received/Second	Number of good frames received per second.
Frames Transmitted/Second	Number of frames transmitted per second.
Framing Errors	Serial port framing errors.
Incomplete Frames	Number of incomplete frames received.
Overrun Errors	Serial port overrun errors.
Timeout Errors	Serial port timeout errors.
Total Bytes Received	Total number of bytes received.
Total Bytes Transmitted	Total number of bytes transmitted.

Table 26.7 Disk Cache settings in System Monitor

Setting	Description

Cache buffers	Number of active buffers in a cache, including any and all compressed buffers.
Cache hits	Number of times data found in the cache resulting in I/O requests.
Cache misses	Number of times data not found in the cache resulting in I/O requests.
Cache pages	Current number of disk cache pages.
Failed cache recycles	Number of times a recycling request (either least recently used [LRU] or random) has failed. This can happen in low memory situations or when all cache buffers are currently in use.
LRU cache recycles	Number of times the cache is sequentially searched for a buffer to recycle, beginning with the oldest data. This happens when new data needs to be added to the cache, or when memory manager needs to borrow memory from the cache.
Maximum cache pages	Maximum number of disk cache pages.
Minimum cache pages	Minimum number of disk cache pages.
Random cache recycles	Number of times the cache is randomly searched for a buffer to recycle. This can happen whenever the cache becomes filled with data not used lately.

Table 26.8 File System settings in System Monitor

Setting	Description

Bytes read/second	The number of bytes read from the file system each second.
Bytes written/second	The number of bytes written by the file system each second.
Dirty data	The number of bytes waiting to be written to the disk. Dirty data is stored in cache blocks, so the number reported might be larger than the actual number of bytes waiting.
Reads/second	The number of read operations delivered to the file system each second.
Writes/second	The number of write operations delivered to the file system each second.

Table 26.9 Kernel settings in System Monitor

Setting	Description

Processor Usage (%)¹	The approximate percentage of time the processor is busy.
Threads	The current number of threads present in the system.
Virtual Machines	The current number of virtual machines present in the system.


¹ Monitoring processor usage will increase processor usage slightly, so do not monitor this setting unless you are investigating a problem.

Table 26.10 Memory Manager VMM32 settings

Setting	Description

Allocated memory¹, ²	The total amount in bytes of Other memory and Swappable memory. If this value is changing when there is no activity on the computer, it indicates that the disk cache is resizing itself.
Discards	The number of pages discarded from memory each second. (The pages are not swapped to the disk, because the information is already on the disk.)
Disk cache size	The current size, in bytes, of the disk cache.
Instance faults	The number of instance faults each second.
Locked memory¹	The amount of allocated memory that is locked.
Locked non-cache pages	Number of non-cache locked pages.
Maximum disk cache size	The largest size possible for a disk cache. This is a fixed value loaded at system startup.
Mid disk cache size	The mid disk cache size. This is a fixed value loaded at system startup.
Minimum disk cache size	The smallest size possible for a disk cache. This is a fixed value loaded at system startup.
Other memory¹	The amount of allocated memory not stored in the swap file, for example, code from Win32 dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and executable files, memory mapped files, nonpageable memory, and disk cache pages.
Page faults	The number of page faults each second.
Page-ins	The number of pages swapped into memory each second, including pages loaded from a Win32-based executable file or memory-mapped files. Consequently, this value does not necessarily indicate low memory.
Page-outs	The number of pages swapped out of memory and written to disk each second.
Pages mapped from cache	Used to monitor MapCache/WinAlign changes. The swap file size in use at the same time as this setting should be monitored for differences after running the WinAlign tool.
Swap file defective	The number of bytes in the swap file that are found to be physically defective on the swap medium. Because swap file frames are allocated in 4096-byte blocks, a single damaged sector causes the whole block to be marked as defective.
Swap file in use	The number of bytes being used in the current swap file.
Swap file size	The size, in bytes, of the current swap file.
Swappable memory¹	The number of bytes allocated from the swap file. Locked pages still count for the purpose of this metric. This includes code from 16-bit applications and DLLs, but not code from Win32 DLLs and executable files.
Unused physical memory	Amount of physical memory (RAM) not currently in use.


¹ This number includes the disk cache. To see the actual size, subtract the value of Disk cache size. ² For any Windows-based application that uses common dialog boxes, the spooler, OLE, and so on, handles are cached for later use, so not all resources will be freed when the application closes.

Table 26.11 Microsoft Network Client settings in System Monitor

Setting	Description

Bytes read/second	The number of bytes read from the redirector each second.
Bytes written/second	The number of bytes written to the redirector each second.
Number of nets	Number of networks currently running.
Open files	Number of open files on the network.
Resources	Number of resources.
Sessions	Number of sessions.
Transactions/second	The number of server message block (SMB) transactions managed by the redirector each second.

Table 26.12 Microsoft Network Server file and printer sharing for Microsoft or NetWare networks settings in System Monitor

Setting	Description

Buffers	The number of buffers used by the server.
Bytes Read/sec	The total number of bytes read from a disk.
Bytes Written/sec	The total number of bytes written to a disk.
Bytes/sec	The total number of bytes read from and written to a disk.
Memory	The total memory used by the server.
NBs	Server network buffers.
Server Threads	The current number of threads used by the server.