As I progress through The Windows Chronicles, I will be introducing readers to the tools that I use. Almost all of them are found on every Windows system.
Tools Included with Windows
Resource Monitor
The first entry of The Windows Chronicles is Background Noise. All the information provided in that article is derived from Resource Monitor. Typing “Resource” in the search box should bring up the program.
Clicking on the Network tab will immediately present what is happening in the background on your system that is engaging the network. In this example, there are programs you would expect to be running, such as Chrome or Firefox. But mspaint? That’s the good ol’ Paint program that has been around since Windows was born! What is it doing handshaking with the router?
Clicking on the CPU tab will provide a view of all the processes running on your system. Of particular interest is the CPU utilization. But you will find a myriad of other details that will be explained in various articles, providing clues as to where files are located and other system resources affected by a program.
The Memory tab is generally helpful in presenting the priority a program assumes in system memory. You may find some surprises along the way.
Disk utilization is helpful in regards to discovering what files are engaged by a process and may provide helpful information that points to performance depredation (storage devices are considerably slower than memory speed).
One technique I frequently use is to place to click a checkbox of a suspect process. This narrows the range of data to just that process, removing a lot of the clutter.