Following on from our posts on the Basic Troubleshooting Toolkit and Basic Debugging of an Application Crash , let's talk about actually capturing Application crash dumps and failures. Most administrators are familiar with the Dr. Watson for Windows tool...

Last year, we discussed using the WMI Diagnosis Utility in a post on Basic WMI Testing .  We’ve certainly noticed that more than a few of our customers are running the utility before contacting us, which certainly helps us in our troubleshooting...

Hello again, Aamer Shedam here. I have recently come across a Windows 7 behavior, that while it is intentional and is meant to ease printer management, may be less than intuitive to many. The behavior is that if you install multiple printers that use...

Hi all, We here on AskPerf try to supply the community with relevant and timely information to help you better do your job. There are times however when our creative juices run dry, and that is where you all come in. So, what I am asking is that you comment...

In our post last month regarding a Basic Troubleshooting Toolkit , one of the tools we mentioned was Process Monitor. The new version of Process Monitor combines the old Process Monitor tool with the File Monitor (FileMon) and Registry Monitor (RegMon...

Today we are continuing on with our Two Minute Drill series. Our topic in this post is one that we discuss quite frequently with customers - namely the automation of creating Performance Monitor and Trace Logs. Most administrators are comfortable creating...

This is a follow-up to our Processes consuming high amounts of virtual memory post from January. Pagefile issues are something we deal with frequently on the Performance Team. We have had several cases in the past few months of customers reporting pagefile...

Hey there!  Blake here with my long overdue post (I know, I’m sorry!) on the new Task Scheduler for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.  In Part One , we discussed the new User Interface, Triggers and Task Conditions.  Today we’re going...

Good morning AskPerf! There are several issues that have been associated with a high number of inactive Terminal Server ports. Delayed logon times to RDP sessions, failure of printers to redirect, and slow server performance due to registry bloat from...

Hello Everyone. This is Digvijay once again with a new blog post about my favorite component – Printing. Since the release of Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 there have been several times where we get calls from the customers saying that they...

Today we are looking at a couple of new changes/additions to the Task Scheduler service in Windows Vista and Server 2008.  As an overview, the Task Scheduler service provides controlled, unattended management of task execution, launched either on...

Here on the Performance team we support the functionality of the Windows Installer engine and the installation and uninstallation of .msi packages. We are also often engaged to help with issues by other teams when an installation fails to install (or...

The Server Message Protocol (SMB) is the file sharing protocol used by default on Windows-based computers. Although file sharing and network protocols are primarily supported by our Networking team, it is important to understand how SMB works given its...

In my previous posting on Access Violations, I briefly mentioned Data Execution Prevention (DEP).  I have recently had the opportunity to work on a couple of customer issues that caused me to dig a bit deeper into the workings of DEP, so I figured...

Hey there AskPerf – my name is Craig Marcho and I am a Support Engineer with the Performance team in Texas. Today’s post is going to be something a little different than you’re used to seeing on AskPerf. We’re going to take a look at my recent experiences...

Last week, while planning blog posts for April, it occurred to me that although we had provided information on using the /3GB switch in the boot.ini file on Windows Server 2003, we hadn’t followed up with a post about how to implement this same functionality...

It’s October 1st, 2009! That means that it’s time to get started on our Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Launch Series. Day One – let’s start at the very beginning, which is usually a very good place to start. Today we’re covering Upgrade Paths, Registry...

Server Message Block (SMB) traffic is an application-level network protocol typically used for file and print sharing. Microsoft implements SMB in Windows operating systems through the Workstation and Server services; the client and server components...

It's Day Twenty-Three of our series.  The Launch Event is just a couple of days away.  Following on from yesterday's post on Terminal Services RemoteApps , today we're going to be providing a very brief overview of the Architecture of Terminal...

Every couple of months or so, we'll get a call from an Administrator reporting that his system hung when he tried to reboot it after installing patches. More often than not, the patches were installed by an Administrator logging on to the server via Remote...

Day Five ... only twenty-two more days to go till Launch Day.  On the menu today - Windows Error Reporting. Starting with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista SP1, Windows Error Reporting (WER) can be configured to collect full user-mode dump files...

Welcome to Day 9 of our launch series, and the first of 4 covering RDS. In todays post, we are going to cover the “Remote Desktop Management Server” (RDMS) interface for creating and managing a Windows Server 2012 Remote Desktop environment...

Welcome to day 2 of our Launch Series. This is part one of a two part series regarding the new Start Screen and User Interface in Windows 8. Today, we will look into tiles and groups. The Start screen replaces the Start menu from previous versions...

It’s day 6 of our Launch Series.  Today we are going to talk about Task Manager and the new benefits it provides.  For our Developers, there were 3 main goals that they focused on for the new Task Manager.  These included the following...

Happy Friday AskPerf! I'm sure you've already surmised by the title of the post that today's topic is a somewhat bittersweet one. XE3E9MT8HW5V It is said that all good things must come to an end. In that same vein, the one constant about working at...