Excerpt from MCTS 70-620 Exam Cram: Microsoft Windows Vista, Configuring.
By Patrick Regan Published by Exam Cram ISBN-10: 0-7897-3688-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-3688-8

Terms you'll need to understand:

• Performance

• Reliability

• Task Manager

• Data Collector Set (DCS)

• Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor

• Chkdsk

• Defragmentation

• ReadyBoost

• ReadyDrive

• Memory Diagnostic tool

• Startup Repair tool (StR)

• Safe mode

Techniques/concepts you'll need to master:

• Use the Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor and Task Manager to identify bottlenecks.

• Run Chkdsk to verify the integrity of the drive.

• Run Disk Defragmenter to optimize your drive.

• Configure the paging file for optimum performance.

• Describe, enable, and configure ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive.

• Run multiple troubleshooting tools, including the Memory Diagnostic tool, Network Diagnostic tool, Startup Repair tool, System Configuration tool, and the Problems Reports and Solutions tool.

• Troubleshoot various computer problems in Safe mode.

• Use Event Viewer to view errors and warnings when troubleshooting a problem.

Performance is the overall effectiveness of how data moves through the system. To be able to improve performance, you must determine the part of the system that is slowing down the throughput. Processor speed, the amount of RAM on the machine, the speed of the disk system, the speed of the network adapter card, or another factor can affect performance. This limiting factor is referred to as the bottleneck of the system.

Reliability is a measure of how often a system deviates from configured, expected behavior. Reliability problems occur as the result of application crashes, service freezes and restarts, driver initialization failures, and operating system failures.

Hardware, memory, and performance diagnostics are the heart of the Windows Vista self-correcting architecture. Hardware diagnostics can detect error conditions and either repair the problem automatically or guide the user through a recovery process. With potential disk failures, hardware diagnostics guide users through the backup procedure to minimize downtime and data loss.

Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor and Task Manager

Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that provides tools for analyzing system performance. From a single console, you can monitor application and hardware performance in real time, customize what data you want to collect in logs, define thresholds for alerts and automatic actions, generate reports, and view past performance data in a variety of ways.

An important feature in Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor is the Data Collector Set (DCS), which groups data collectors into reusable elements. After a Data Collector Set is defined, you can schedule the collection of data using the DCS or see it in real time.

Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor consists of three monitoring tools:

• Resource View

• Performance Monitor

• Reliability Monitor

To start the Reliability and Performance Monitor, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, right-click Computer, and click Manage.

2. Expand System Tools and click Reliability and Performance.

---

Note - To be able to view the performance counters, a user needs to be in the Performance Monitor Users group or an administrator.

---