Abstract
This chapter covers a variety of NT utilities and applications with performance tuning capabilities or implications, including the Task Manager, NT Diagnostics, and Control Panel Utilities.
In addition to Performance Monitor and Network Monitor, Windows NT is home to other turning and performance-related utilities, including Task Manager, NT Diagnostics and Control Panel utilities. Understanding how each tool in the NT environment operates is key to maintaining a high-performance system. In this chapter, we look into some of the other performance and turning utilities and interfaces.
NT TASK MANAGER
The NT Task Manager is a simple and easy-to-use tool for getting realtime insight into your system’s performance. At first glance, you may overlook Task Manager’s usefulness because of its simplicity. However, Task Manager is often your first weapon for locating and isolating bottlenecks and system failures.
Task Manager can be launched by
right-clicking over an empty area of the taskbar, then selecting Task Manager from the popup menu, or
pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, then clicking Task Manager.
The first time you launch Task Manager, it displays the Applications tab. For future launches, however, Task Manager remembers its window position, window size, and selected tab, and returns to the display state that was in use when it was last closed.
Task Manager has three tabs, each of which displays a unique set of information that, by default, is updated in realtime. The tabs are Applications, Processes, and Performance.
Applications Tab
The Applications tab (Figure 5.1) displays a list of applications that are currently active as well as each application’s status.
The default normal status is “running.” When an application fails or stops functioning, the status changes to “not responding.” You can terminate applications listed on this tab by selecting the item and clicking End Task. You can launch new applications by clicking New Task, which displays the Create New Task dialog box.
The Task Manager menu bar changes to match the context of the selected tab. When the Applications tab is selected, the menu bar offers the following commands, listed with the actions they perform:
File|New Task (RunÉ) — This command opens the Create New Task dialog box, which operates like the Start|Run command.
File|Exit Task Manager — This command shuts down Task Manager. The “X” title bar button can also be used to close Task Manager.
Options|Always on Top — By default, Task Manager remains the forefront application. This command has a checkmark beside it when active. Deselecting this option causes the Task Manager to behave in the same way as other standard windowed applications.
Options|Minimize on Use — This command instructs Task Manager to minimize itself when a Switch To operation is performed. It has a checkmark beside it when active.
Options|Confirmations — This command prompts for verification before altering processes. It has a checkmark beside it when active.
Options|Hide When Minimized — This command hides the Task Manager when minimized, which means an application icon does not appear in the Taskbar. However, the Task Manager icon appears in the icon tray. This command has a checkmark beside it when active.
View|Refresh Now — This command forces Task Manager to update its display regardless of the Update Speed.
View|Update Speed|High/Normal/Low/Paused — This command sets the Task Manager update frequency for Task Manager; the default is Normal. High is twice per second; Normal is every two seconds; Low is every four seconds.
View|Large Icons/Small Icons/Details — This command sets the display of tasks to large icons, small icons, or details. Only the default of Details displays task status.
Windows — The commands in this menu are used to arrange the windows of active tasks. The commands are Tile Horizontally, Tile Vertically, Minimize, Maximize, Cascade, and Bring to Front. All but Bring to Front can be used on several tasks at once by selecting them while pressing Shift (to select a range) or Ctrl (to select individual tasks).
Note: The Help menu is excluded from the above list because it contains standard Windows Help commands.
The Applications tab of Task Manager is a great place to start troubleshooting if you suspect an application is not functioning properly. If the application has a status of “running,” you can attempt to improve its operation by increasing its priority to “high.” To do so, select the Go to Process command from the popup menu and change the priority for the process. Priority changes cannot be made on the Applications tab.
If the shell task is the application that is having problems or is listed as not responding, you can terminate and restart the shell from the Applications tab. Most often, the Windows Explorer application, the default shell, is listed on the Applications tab as “Exploring - <path statement>”. After ending the task, click New Task to locate and launch the shell again (usually \WINNT\EXPLORER.EXE).
Processes Tab
The Processes tab (Figure 5.2) lists all processes that are currently active and loaded in memory and displays several metrics or details about each process.
Thirteen additional detail items can be displayed in addition to the process name. They include CPU usage, memory usage, page faults, virtual memory size, and handle count. Clicking on any column acts as a toggle to sort that column alternately in ascending and descending order. To terminate a process, select it in the list and click End Process. The execution priority of a process can be altered by right-clicking over the process, then selecting Set Priority from the popup menu. This selection reveals four additional commands — realtime, high, normal, and low. Selecting one of these priority levels changes the process’s current level (indicated by a dot beside the priority) to the new level. In the 32 levels of execution priority (0 being the lowest and 31 the highest) NT uses , realtime is 24, high is 13, normal is 8, and low is 4. Only administrators can set a priority to realtime, and only the system can set priorities higher than 24.
Note: You can set priority functionality from a command line using the Start command, “start [/low l/normal l/high l/realtime] application,” where applicaton is the path and file name of the process you want to launch. You cannot use this command , however, to alter the priority of an already active process.
The menu bar does not vary greatly from that displayed for the Applications tab, but the few minor changes are important:
Options|Show 16-bit tasks — This command displays the 16-bit tasks operating under their associated ntvdm.exe or NT Virtual DOS machine.
View|Select Columns — Instead of the Icons/Display control, this command reveals the Select Columns dialog box via which you can select up to 13 data columns for display on the Process tab.
The Process tab can help you determine which processes are active and which of the active processes are not receiving CPU time. This can indicate either that a process has stalled or that it does not have any processing to perform. You should always “invoke” a process without CPU access time by sending it a command or a task rather than assuming that is has stalled. Once you have determined that a process is stalled, you can terminate it. (Depending on the service, issuing a task to it again causes it to be launched again. In some cases, you may need to use the Services applet to restart terminated services.)
The Process tab is also a great place to locate active or stalled processes that do not appear on the Applications tab or the Task bar. If you have attempted to launch an application multiple times, but only a single instance appears in the Task bar, the Process tab can tell you whether more than one process for that application is loaded.
Performance Tab
The Performance tab (Figure 5.3) displays graphs of CPU and memory usage.
The left thermometer graph displays the instantaneous level of usage, which is updated at each interval or when the Refresh Now command is issued. The right plot line graph is a history of readings over the last 100 measurements. Double-clicking over any of the displayed graphs changes the Task Manager into a full-window display of the CPU Usage and History graphs.
Numerical details and summaries for other system resource items are displayed in four areas below the graph:
Totals: Handles — The number of system objects in use, such as files, Registry keys, and virtual machines.
Totals: Threads — The number of execution threads from all active processes.
Totals: Processes — The number of active processes.
Physical Memory (K): Total — The size of physical RAM.
Physical Memory (K): Available — The amount of unused physical RAM.
Physical Memory (K): File Cache — The amount of physical RAM being used for caching files.
Commit Change (K): Total — The total amount of virtual memory allocated to processes or the system.
Commit Change (K): Limit — The maximum amount of virtual memory on this computer.
Commit Change (K): Peak — The maximum amount of virtual memory used during this boot session.
Kernel Memory (K): Total — The amount of memory used by the kernel.
Kernel Memory (K): Paged — The amount of total kernel memory that can be saved to a swap file.
Kernel Memory (K): Nonpaged — The amount of kernel memory that always remains in physical RAM.
If you suspect your system is using all available memory or that the CPU is overtasked, this is a great place to perform an instant check. One interesting feature of this tab is the View|Show Kernel Times menu-bar command, which causes the CPU to use graphs to display the portion of CPU cycles that the kernel uses in red and the portion that nonkernel tasks use in green.
This tab can display an individual CPU Usage History graph for each CPU in a multiprocessor system. The View|CPU History|One Graph Per CPU command enables and displays this feature.
WinConnections Conference Fall 2008 Don’t miss the premier event for Microsoft IT Professionals in Las Vegas, November 10-13. Register and book your room by August 25 and receive a FREE room night (based on a three night minimum stay).
Master SharePoint with 3 eLearning Seminars Learn how to build a better SharePoint infrastructure and enable powerful collaboration with MVPs Dan Holme and Michael Noel. Register today!
SharePointConnections Conference Fall 2008 Don’t miss the premier event for Microsoft IT Professionals in Las Vegas, November 10-13. Register and book your room by August 25 and receive a FREE room night (based on a three night minimum stay).
VMworld 2008 - Sign Up Today! Join your peers on September 15-18 at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas as VMware hosts VMworld 2008, the leading Virtualization event.
Microsoft® Tech•Ed EMEA 2008 IT Professionals Advance your thinking with new ideas and practical real-world solutions at Microsoft’s FIVE day technical infrastructure conference 3-7 Nov., 2008. Register before 26 September 2008 to save €300.
Order Your Fundamentals CD Today! Gain an introduction to Exchange, learn server security requirements, and understand how unified communications can play a role in your messaging strategies with this free Exchange CD.
Are You Really Compliant with Software Regulations? View this web seminar that will help you with compliance best practices and check out a management solution to assure that you won’t be in jeopardy of an audit.
Virtualization Congress Oct. 14-16 in London Don't miss Virtualization Congress, the premiere EMEA conference dedicated to hardware, OS and application virtualization. Oct. 14-16 in London.
Windows IT Pro
Register
