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...

Today we’re going to go over a quick method to deploy print queues and printer drivers to multiple machines when other deployment methods, including deploying via GPO are not feasible. We’re going to use PsExec from Windows SysInternals in combination...

Here’s an odd issue that one of our Support Engineers ran into with a customer recently that I thought would be interesting to share. Systems Administrators use scheduled tasks to run batch files as a normal part of their job. In this specific instance...

Hello AskPerf readers!  Today’s post is being published a little later than usual. Today we are launching the Customer Preview Program (CPP) for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 to MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and we wanted to give a first look. ...

Hello AskPerf. Happy New Year! My name is Gangadharan Prashanth and we’re going to kick off 2009 with a quick look at WMI Namespace Security and a common error message that we see when running the WMI Diagnosis Utility (WMIDiag). When running WMIDiag...

We've talked a lot about the /3GB switch and its effect on system resources in previous posts.  Today we are going to discuss how to determine whether or not /3GB is enabled on a 32-bit system without looking at the boot.ini file or using MSCONFIG...

Last year we did a quick series on WMI troubleshooting.  Something that we didn’t cover is a quick method to verify the consistency of the repository.  Many of you have probably done a rebuild of the repository on Windows Server 2003 or an earlier...

When people first hear the term IRQL (pronounced Er-kel) their thoughts sometimes turn to the sitcom "Family Matters" and Jaleel White's alter ego, Steve Urkel.  However, we're not going to be taking a trip down Television's Memory Lane...

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...

In our last post, we looked at some common memory issues and how to troubleshoot them.  Today we're going to go over excessive paging and memory bottlenecks. We've talked about issues with the page file in several posts - something to bear in mind...

Almost everyone that has ever used Windows has either heard of or experienced a bugcheck - the infamous "Blue Screen of Death."  A system may bugcheck for different reasons, but the bottom line is that the operating system has experienced...

Several months ago, we wrote a post on Troubleshooting Server Hangs .  At the end of that post, we provided some basic steps to follow with respect to server hangs.  The last step in the list was following the steps in KB Article 244139 to prepare...

Today we're going to discuss the IE User-Agent String - a term with which more administrators are becoming familiar since the launch of IE7. The User-Agent string identifies your browser to the server hosting the site that you are visiting. This allows...

One of the pillars of Windows Vista and Longhorn is to enable users to find information quickly. This includes documents, email, media and web pages a user might have browsed. Effective searching and browsing requires an infrastructure to index content...

Here on the Perf team, we deal with quite a few printing issues. An issue we've had a few calls on since the release of Windows Vista concerns the changes made to the Point & Print functionality. Point & Print is a Windows feature that enables...

A very common question that we are asked is, "What kind of data can I gather before I talk to a Support Engineer at Microsoft?" In all honesty, there is no single right answer - especially where the Performance team is concerned! It all depends on the...

Today we're going to start looking at Clustered Print Servers. Clustering itself tends to intimidate many administrators, especially newer administrators. Much of the fear factor usually stems from being unfamiliar with how clustering works, and the fact...

Printer sharing, information retrieval, and data storage are among the most frequently used network services. This also means that when something major happens to a print server or file server - lots of people are adversely affected. Issues with Print...

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...

Hi all,   Here on the Performance Team we constantly deal with issues caused by incorrect performance tuning of various servers. This will generally manifest itself in system or process slowness or memory or CPU bottlenecks. I have decided to publish...

· Hi all, A few years ago, when Windows Server 2008 released, we blogged about some changes made in the operating system to reduce the overall attack surface of installed services on the Server. This was taking changes made in Windows Server Service Pack...

Hi folks! Satyajit here with a brief discussion of a very useful tool. You may have had the need to run a Performance Monitor log at one time or another, but noticed that a needed counter was missing from the list. This can occur if the counter has been...

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...

Happy Sunday, everyone! Welcome to Day Eleven of our Windows 7 & Windows Server 2008 R2 Launch Series. Today, we’re going to wrap up our look at Printing and Document Services with an overview of Distributed Scan Management (DSM). As more scanner...

com·pat·i·ble       adjective       \kəm-ˈpa-tə-bəl\ : capable of existing together in harmony What is a Shim? A shim is one of the very few four-letter words in use by Microsoft that isn’t an...