THREE MONITORING TOOLS YOU MUST START USING
PERFORMANCE MONITOR
Now that you’ve given your computer a quick health check, it’s time to dig a little deeper and make sure there’s nothing causing Windows 10 to slow down.
To do this, we’re going to use three monitoring tools, starting with Performance Monitor. This scans your computer for one minute, then reports back with details about everything from how much your computer’s processor and memory are being used, to specific files that are causing your hard drive to work harder. As we explain below, you can then use this information to identify programs that are putting unnecessary strain on your computer, then take action to speed things up and keep Windows 10 running smoothly.
Run a diagnostics report
First, make sure you’re logged into Windows with an administrator account (if you have only one Windows user account on your computer, it will be an administrator account by default). Next, click start, type perfmon, then select Performance Monitor in the results (take care to not select Resource Monitor here – we’ll be using that tool later).
The ‘Performance’ screen, which is displayed when you open Performance Monitor, shows a real-time view of what your computer is doing. This includes how its memory is being used and details of your hard drive’s ‘idle’ time (more of this is better because it indicates your drive isn’t being put under too much stress). This provides a snapshot of how your computer performed during the scan, though for real-time analysis you’ll need a different tool, as we’ll explain later on.
Instead, it’s best to use Performance Monitor only to run a diagnostic report. To do this, double-click the Data Collector Sets option in the left-hand menu, then double-click System. From here, right-click System Diagnostics and select Start (see screenshot below). Performance Monitor will now monitor your computer for one minute.
Interpret the results
To view your report, go to the left-hand menu then click Reports, followed by System. You’ll see a list of all the diagnostic reports that you’ve run – each entry starts with the name of your computer. They’re listed in date order from oldest to newest, so to view your most recent click the entry at the bottom (if you’ve only just run a report, you may have to wait a few seconds for it to complete). At the top of the report, you’ll see the name of your computer, the time and date you ran it, and how long it ran for.
The ‘Diagnostic Results’ section gives a brief overview of the performance test. Pay particular attention to the Error section at the top, which will warn you about any faulty hardware. Errors in this section usually relate to hardware that doesn’t have a driver or is using one that’s stopped working. In either case you can usually fix this by opening Device Manager (search for it in the Start menu), right-clicking the appropriate hardware, then selecting ‘Update driver’.
Our report revealed that two network adapters were disabled – one relating to our virtual PC, the other our laptop’s Ethernet port (see 1 in our screenshot above). We left the former disabled because we’re not currently using the virtual PC, but decided to enable the latter by selecting it in Device Manager (as explained above), then selecting ‘Enable device’ 2 .
Identify hidden resource hogs
Further down the report, the ‘Performance section’ indicates the extent to which your processor (or CPU) and hard drive (Disk) were in use during the diagnostics scan. If either are marked as High, it could be because your antivirus program was performing a routine scan during the report or that Windows was checking for new updates, but you may also find a program you no longer need is hogging your processor.
By expanding the CPU section in our report, we can see the processor is listed as being Idle (in other words, not being used by any program) for 67.4 per cent of
the test (see 1 in our screenshot above). However, in the Service section (this shows programs running in the background) the report revealed a service called ‘Fing.agent’ (part of the networking tool Fing, which we installed a few months previously) used 3.5 per cent 2 of our processor. It’s not a huge amount, but enough for us to consider uninstalling Fing (as we’ll explain in a moment, a separate monitoring tool reveals a more pressing reason for us to uninstall Fing).
The Savservice entry 3 relates to our antivirus tool (Sophos), which was performing a background scan at the time. The report also shows that Glasswire (another networking program) is using a small amount of processor power. Like Fing, we no longer use it, so we’ve earmarked it for uninstallation.
The diagnostic report also reveals what your hard drive is doing. Expand the Disk section, then double-click the Hot Files heading and you’ll see which files your hard drive was writing to (saving data) and reading from (accessing saved data) the most.
As with the other sections, you can re-order your list by clicking any of the column headers. When sorting by ‘Kb/write’ (how many kilobytes the hard drive wrote to each file), a file relating to Windows’ backup – File History – topped the list. We don’t use File History for our backups, but had inadvertently left the tool switched on - something we rectified by going to the ‘Update & Security’ section of the Settings app, then Backup.
RESOURCE MONITOR Monitor Windows 10 in real time
While the diagnostic report in Performance Monitor is useful, you should use Resource Monitor to see in real time how your computer is performing. Launch it by searching for it in the Start menu.
The tool’s ‘Overview’ tab displays four charts that continuously update, showing how Windows 10 has been using your processor, hard drive, Wi-fi and memory over the past 60 seconds (click the Views button then select Large to make the charts bigger).
Monitor a specific program
If you want to keep an eye on a particular program – such as one that your Performance Monitor report flagged as a potential problem – select it in the CPU section on the left. An orange line will now appear on each chart, indicating what proportion of the activity was caused by your selected program.
When we selected ‘googledrivesync.exe’ (see screenshot above), the charts indicated that this is a big drain on our processor, hard drive and network connection. Because this process is associated with Google’s ‘Backup and Sync’ tool (our chosen online backup service), we were happy to leave it running, though we’re hoping Google’s new backup service (due to launch in the next few months) will use less system resources.
If you spot a program that you don’t recognise (particularly if it’s making regular use of your internet connection), we recommend searching for it online to find out what it relates to and make sure your Windows security settings are strengthened (as we explain on page 55).
Performance Monitor and Resource Monitor are great for checking how smoothly Windows is running now, but they’re not as good at weeding out problems that are intermittent. For this, you need to look back in time using Reliability Monitor (open it by clicking Start, typing reliability, then clicking ‘View reliability history’ in the results). Even if Windows 10 seems to be running smoothly, we recommend running this tool every month or so to identify programs that may cause problems in future.
Check Windows’ reliability
You’ll see a chart at the top of the Reliability Monitor window – this indicates your computer’s reliability over the past few weeks (10 indicates it’s completely reliable, 1 the opposite). The symbols below the chart indicate what happened on each given date. Keep an eye on the red crosses here because they show your computer suffered a failure. These can represent anything from your computer not being shut down properly to Windows crashing completely.
Click these icons and more details will appear in the bottom half of the window. As you can see in our example, Fing is yet again causing trouble – crashing twice on 21 July (see screenshot below). We don’t want to be too harsh on Fing (the problems it’s having on our computer could be due to a conflict with one of the many other programs we have installed). However, because we very rarely use it we’ve since decided to uninstall Fing.