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Good morning AskPerf!  How many times have we looked at Windows Task Manager and wondered what the values on the Performance tab meant?  Why do they not add up?  What is the difference between Free and Available Memory, etc., etc., etc.?  In today’s post, we will take a look at these...

Hey Folks, one of our peeps on AskPFEplat posted a great blog on Troubleshooting Performance issues using the Windows Performance Recorder app.  This tool allows you to easily capture XPERF traces on your *machines.  Go check it out! Troubleshooting Windows Performance Issues Using the Windows...

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! ...

Good morning all – today’s post is a very brief one regarding new announcements concerning Remote Desktop Services.  The original announcements were made on the Remote Desktop ServicesTeam blog . RDS CAL Single Pack now available in Retail channel – Remote Desktop Client Access Licenses (CAL’s)...

Happy Friday AskPerf! One of our Technical Account Managers pinged me a few weeks ago and asked if I could put together something on how to do a server baseline. After thinking about how best to do this for a while, I realized that trying to create a one-stop shop for server performance baselines goes...

Hello again AskPerf!  Blake Morrison here to introduce you to a new tool from Sysinternals called ProcDump.  If you are familiar with AdPlus then ProcDump will be a welcome addition to your debugging arsenal.  ProcDump is a new command line tool which allows you to monitor a running process...

Welcome back AskPerf!  Carrying on with our debugging / architectural theme from the last couple of weeks, today’s topic is about the stack.  A stack is a way of storing information – a data structure.  When a new object is placed on the stack it is placed on the top of the stack. ...

Good Morning AskPerf!  Today is the last in our series on Windows Synchronization Mechanisms.  Our topic today is Semaphore Objects.  A semaphore object is a kernel-mode synchronization object that maintains a count between zero and a maximum specified value.  Semaphores are similar...

Good Morning AskPerf! We’re continuing on with our mini-series on Synchronization Mechanisms today with a look at Mutexes. A mutex is a synchronization object. Mutexes ensure mutually exclusive (hence the term) access. In other words, while one thread has the mutex, all other threads are prevented from...

Good Morning AskPerf!  On Tuesday, we went over some very high-level concepts around synchronization mechanisms.  Today, we’re going to briefly dig into one of those mechanisms, Interlocked Operations, in a little more depth.  This isn’t going to be a programming exercise, it’s really...

Good morning AskPerf! I realize it’s been a couple of weeks or so since we’ve posted. The reason is that we’ve all been a bit busy trying to wrap up the end of our fiscal year, write our reviews and of course, there was the Fourth of July holiday in there as well. But, we’re now back and we’re going...

On June 18th, Mark Russinovich will be hosting a Virtual Roundtable on Windows 7 Application Compatibility. This is a chance for IT Pros to learn all about Windows 7 Application Compatibility and get answers to any management or deployment questions for Windows 7. You can submit your performance questions...

Hello again AskPerf! Blake Morrison here to discuss a little known OS tool called TYPEPERF. TYPEPERF is a built-in tool that writes performance data to the command window or to a log file. If you are a command line junkie, love to script, and need to get Performance data from your Workstation or Server...

Good morning AskPerf.  Today’s post is a very short one, but it does address one of our most common Shell / Windows UI questions.  That question is, “Why can’t I see the size of folders in Windows Explorer?”  The simple answer is that the behavior is by design.  You can view the size...

Hello AskPerf, my name is Subheet Rastogi and I am a Technical Lead on the Performance team in Bangalore.  Today, we’re going to take a quick look at issues that typically arise when using graphic intensive applications or media streaming in a Remote Desktop Session.  Some common examples where...

WINDOWS SYSTEM RESOURCE MANAGER - WINDOWS SERVER 2003 Description: Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) is a feature of Windows Server 2003, Enterprise and Datacenter editions. Using WSRM, administrators can control how CPU resources are allocated to applications, services, and processes. Managing...

WINDOWS SYSTEM RESOURCE MANAGER - WINDOWS SERVER 2008 Description: Microsoft Windows System Resource Manager (WSRM) provides resource management and enables the allocation of resources, including processor and memory resources, among multiple applications based on business priorities. With WSRM...

PERFORMANCE MONITOR (Pre-Windows Vista) Description: One of the most useful tools in diagnosing system performance issues is Performance Monitor (Perfmon) logging. Perfmon allows the user to turn on performance counters for various objects relating to system performance, such as: Memory, Network...

RELIABILITY / PERFORMANCE MONITOR (Windows Vista +) Description: Microsoft Windows Vista includes Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor, which is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that combines the functionality of previous stand-alone tools including Performance Logs and Alerts...

MEMORY MANAGEMENT - WORKING SET TRIMMING Description: Working Set Trimming refers to a condition wherein all Working Sets are flushed to the disk. A Working Set is the amount of physical memory used by a process. Working Set Trimming is primarily seen on SQL Server systems when large amounts...

MEMORY MANAGEMENT (GENERAL: WINDOWS VISTA AND LATER) Description: Memory management is the term used to describe how Windows handles the manipulation and allocation of both virtual and physical memory resources. Physical memory is considered the total of physical RAM and the pagefile or pagefiles...

MEMORY MANAGEMENT – EVENT ID 333 Description: The first thing to understand is what exactly an Event ID 333 is. The event ID 333 is a System event error log that occurs when the registry is unable to complete a flush operation to the disk. There are several reasons that this can fail and we'll...

MEMORY MANAGEMENT (LARGE SYSTEM CACHE ISSUES) Description: The file system cache resides in kernel address space. It is used to buffer access to the much slower hard drive. The file system cache will map and unmap sections of files based on access patterns, application requests and I/O demand...

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...