CyberNotes: Understanding Vista’s Reliability and Performance Monitor

Dec 31

CyberNotes: Understanding Vista’s Reliability and Performance Monitor

Microsoft Monday

When Vista came out, certain new features were talked about more than others, like Flip3D or the indexed search capabilities. One feature that wasn’t really mentioned is the Vista Reliability and Performance Monitor. You may not have known that you have it, but you do. It’s built right in to Vista and it gives you an idea of your system’s overall stability. To get a better idea of what it’s about, Microsoft explains that “You can use Microsoft Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor to examine how programs you run affect your computer’s performance, both in real time and by collecting log data for later analysis. Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor uses performance counters, event trace data, and configuration information which can be combined into Data Collector Sets.”

Today we’ll be taking a visual walk through the Vista Reliability and Performance Monitor. For those of you that like graphs, you’ll be in heaven. There are all kinds of them! Before we get started, I should explain that the easiest way to get to this feature is to open the start menu and in the search box, type “reliability and performance monitor.” You can also go to the Control Panel and click on “Performance Information and Tools then click Advanced Tools, and then one of the options will be “Open Reliability and Performance Monitor.” If you have User Account Control (UAC) enabled, you’ll be prompted to provide administrative privileges to open the application.