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Happy Friday AskPerf!  We’ve had a few questions in the past about guidelines for application design in a faster computing environment.  Now, I make absolutely no claims whatsoever to being any sort of a code guru, and so I wasn’t about to try to pass myself off as an expert in that area! ...

Hi all, and welcome to Day 21 in our Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 Launch Series. Tomorrow is the big day! To wrap up our Launch Series, I want to talk today about a really cool tool included in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 called Problem Steps Recorder . I am sure we have all had situations...

Happy Monday everyone. It’s Day Nineteen of our Launch Series, which means that there are only three more days until Windows 7 appears on store shelves! Today, we’re going to provide a really quick overview of AppLocker, which is a new feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. AppLocker replaces...

Welcome back to our Launch Series. It’s Day Fourteen which means that there’s just over a week to go! Today we’re continuing on with our look at various Remote Desktop Services components. Our subject: RemoteApp and Desktop Connection. In Windows Server 2008 , RemoteApp was introduced to deploy RDS applications...

Happy Monday everyone.  It’s Day Five of our Launch Series.  Today, we’re going to cover a new feature in Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 – Console Host (ConHost.exe).  A good number of companies and individuals out there still run “console” applications.  A console application...

Hello, and welcome to our second post in the Windows 7 launch series. This post is going to be a long one, so buckle in. We’re going to start with an overview of Fault Tolerant Heap, which is a new feature in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and then go over some Memory Management pieces. If you...

TROUBLESHOOTING PACKAGE INSTALLATION Description: Microsoft Windows Installer Service is an installation and configuration service included in Windows. It allows you to add, modify, and remove applications provided as Windows Installer (*.msi) packages. Note, this service is set to Manual by...

TASK SCHEDULER SERVICE Description: The Task Scheduler service enables you to perform automated tasks on a computer. With this service, you can schedule any program to run at any time or when a specific event occurs. The Task Scheduler monitors the time or event criteria that you choose and then...

CREATING TASKS FOR OTHER OS VERSIONS (WINDOWS VISTA +) Description: Creating Scheduled Tasks in Vista and Server 2008 has been vastly improved over Windows 2000/2003/XP. Task Scheduler overall is now more reliable, more scalable, and much easier to use than previous Windows versions. The new...

HIGH CPU – INDIVIDUAL PROCESS Description: High CPU usage can cause slow response times, system hangs, or just overall sluggishness on a system. An individual process may be responsible for consuming most of the CPU time during this period. There are various reasons for a process to cause high...

HIGH CPU – SVCHOST.EXE Description: SVCHOST.EXE is a generic host process for services. There can be multiple SVCHOST.EXE running on a system and each SVCHOST.EXE can also hold multiple services. Troubleshooting high CPU usage with SVCHOST.EXE can difficult since Task Manager or Performance Monitor...

WINDOWS INSTALLER SERVICE ISSUES Description: Microsoft Windows Installer Service is an installation and configuration service included in Windows. It allows you to add, modify, and remove applications provided as Windows Installer (*.msi) packages. Note, this service is set to Manual by default...

WINDOWS POWERSHELL (BASIC COMMANDS) Description: Windows PowerShell is a command line shell and scripting language that helps IT professionals achieve greater control and productivity in their environment. Using an admin-focused scripting language, more than 130 standard command line tools, and...

WINDOWS POWERSHELL (INSTALLATION / CONFIGURATION) Description: Windows PowerShell 1.0 on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista is available via the PowerShell 1.0 setup package. Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 include PowerShell with the Operating System. Windows Server 2008 includes...

CONFIGURING DR. WATSON Description: Dr. Watson is a tool built into previous versions of Windows that assists in the capturing of debugging information in the event of an application crash. Windows Vista and newer operating systems use Windows Error Reporting in lieu of Dr. Watson. Scoping...

DATA EXECUTION PREVENTION: DEP Description: Data Execution Prevention, commonly known as DEP, is Microsoft's software implementation that takes advantage of hardware NX or XD support. This functionality marks physical memory locations as being used for executable or non-executable code. If a...

PERFORMANCE ISSUE (SPECIFIC TO A PROCESS) Description: An application performance issue is generally defined as an application or process performing below expectations. This can be due to high CPU usage, high memory usage or slow performance. This topic is specifically for an application or process...

APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY - SESSION 0 ISOLATION Description: Session 0 Isolation is a feature of Windows Vista and later operating systems. In previous versions of Windows, services run by default within the same session as the first user logon, called Session 0 (session zero). This poses a security...

APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY - USER ACCOUNT CONTROL (UAC) Description: User Account Control (UAC) is the functionality within Windows Vista that allows a user to run under a safer, less privileged context, but switch to an Administrator context when needed. Under normal circumstances, every user...

APPLICATION FAILURES - HANG / CRASH Description: Applications and Services often fail in one of two ways - a hang, or a crash. The reasons behind the failure are different, however much of the data that we need to collect when troubleshooting the issue is quite similar. If the application that...

APPLICATION COMPATIBILITY (GENERAL) Description: Application compatibility is one of the most common issues seen in an enterprise environment. This term is used to describe an issue where an application does not work, or works incorrectly under certain circumstances. Questions or issues with...

16-BIT DOS / WINDOWS APPLICATIONS Description: In general, 16-bit DOS or Windows application failures are treated the same as any other application failure. The sole exception is the fact that 64-bit Windows includes no 16-bit emulation. Because of this, no 16-bit application will be compatible...