OK - following on from our recent WMI Architecture post, let's start digging into some Basic WMI Troubleshooting. There's a lot of material to cover, so this is going to be a multi-part series! It's important to note that these are general concepts and...

Welcome to the twenty-second day of our series. Only a few more days until Launch Day. We'll be sticking with Terminal Services through the end of our series. Today's topic is Terminal Services RemoteApps, a new feature in Windows Server 2008. RemoteApps...

This is in continuation of the topic discussed by John Dickson in his blog post entitled Installing Windows Vista Print Drivers on Windows Server 2003 http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2008/09/19/installing-windows-vista-print-drivers-on-windows...

We've talked quite a bit in the past about various memory management concepts - the use of the /3GB switch , Understanding Pool Resources , the x86 Virtual Address Space and so on.  The most common manifestation of memory issues is a memory shortage...

Welcome back!  If you're just returning from a weekend, hopefully you got some time to yourself to relax.  It's Day Eleven of our Windows Server 2008 Series.  Today's topic - the new WSD Port Monitor. The WSD Port Monitor is a new printer...

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...

When addressing system performance issues, a key element that is often overlooked is Disk Fragmentation.  Even on a brand new system with plenty of RAM and high-end processors, the performance of the hard disk may be a bottleneck causing system performance...

Hi folks! It’s been a long time since I wrote the Terminal Services and Graphically Intensive Applications post. Today’s post is a short one; we will be discussing a curious case of Event ID: 56 on Windows Server 2008/R2 with the Remote Desktop Services...

It's Day Ten of our Windows Server 2008 series.  Seventeen Days to go.  Today we'll be talking about Client-Side Rendering. Client-Side Rendering (CSR) is a new feature that allows print jobs to be fully rendered on the client when targeting...

Hi there, this is Mark with the Windows Performance Team. This post is a quick introduction to a new performance tracing tool called XPerf. Moving forward with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, this powerful tool will hopefully be utilized more often...

Hey folks, it’s Yong Rhee once more.  Today’s post is a short, but an important one for Print Server administrators.  If you’ve ever administered a Print Server, the chances are that you’ve probably had to perform a print server migration as...

Back In October, we wrote a post regarding the Event ID 333 Errors and how to troubleshoot them .  At the end of that post, we mentioned the "Lock Pages in Memory" user right.  One of the things we mentioned was that if you have an...

Today we're going to get started with Windows Server 2008 Server Core. First, let's talk about what the Server Core installation is (and what it is not!). Server Core is a minimal environment to run specific server roles, which reduces the maintenance...

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...

There often arises a need to figure out what may have changed on a system, either due to a specific issue or even to compare the difference between two systems. Today I would like to introduce you to the Windows System State Analyzer utility. Unless you...

Here's an issue we've been seeing more and more of on the Performance team lately concerning SQL 2005 and Memory Management. The issue gets reported as: "Windows Memory Management is trimming the SQL Working Set." When you review the event logs, you'll...

In Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and earlier versions of the Windows operating system, all services run in the same session as the first user who logs on to the console. This session is called Session 0. Running services and user applications together...

It's February 1, 2008. Only twenty-six more days until Windows Server 2008 is released to the world. With that in mind, we have twenty-six posts lined up between now and February 27 covering areas of Windows Server 2008 that contain both general information...

Hello everyone, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Ray Ackley and I’m a Support Escalation Engineer in the Performance specialty. I’d like to talk a bit about a new tool that allows us to examine a vital performance resource: physical memory. This...

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...

Welcome to Day Sixteen.  We're continuing on with our series on Windows Server 2008 in preparation for the launch.  Today, we're going to look at Terminal Server security in Windows Server 2008 - specifically Network Level Authentication and...

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...

Following on from our post on troubleshooting a basic application crash , it's time to start troubleshooting what to do when your entire server hangs. Most of us have run into situations where the server is so unresponsive that we cannot access Task Manager...

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...

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...