Win2000/XP Performance Monitor - tutorial

Fellow techs,
One very valuable tool for optimizing a Win2000/XP PC is the Performance Monitor (Administrative Tools). There must be hundreds of counters that can be added to the monitor screen, ranging from interupts/sec, memory commit limit, page faults/sec,cache hits to current bandwidth,packet errors, etc, etc.
Many of these counters are very detailed and are only needed for very specific uses, but for an advanced tech they are valuable.
Each counter that you add to the monitor has a brief explaination, but falls very short of describing its exact use and application. Does anyone know of a book or website that teachs how to use these counters and what situations each applies to (such as troubleshooting a slow network connection or optimizing virtual memory).
Thanks,
DCO

 

I just took (and passed ) the MCDST exams. In the MS Study guide related to the exams is a chapter that discusses this briefly. Explains how to load various monitors but not much detail on analysis.

Thats about the only time I've seen reference to the monitors you're talking about.

I grew up in Levittown, kinda. In Birch Valley.


-Steve

 

I was trained on how to use them. I'm a little rusty, but may be able to muster up enough motivation to look at it again.

They are more worthless than you might think, and are for long term monitoring, to find obscure problems.

 

Evilevets- A fellow Levittowner, eh. I'm in Greenbrook, not to far from Birch Valley. Your were the Country Clubber houses, wheck were the upscale Levittown homes. What is the MSCDST for...programming, networking? I'm currently just A+ but plan on getting every cert possible.
I was just curious about all those Performance Monitor counters because they look very detailed and I assumed they must be important for any advanced troubleshooting/optimizing. There must be a book or couse that goes into detail about them somewhere.
Thanks,
DCO

 

Adrynalyne,
You're probably right about many of those Performance Monitor counters being worthless.But I'm sure the right combination of those specs may be able to pinpoint a very specific problem. I'm far from being that advanced of a PC tech, having just recently passed A+, but I'm planning on piling up as many certs as I can and eventually getting into enterprise and business networking.Even if theres easier methods of analyzing system performance, being able to "read" the specs of the Performance Monitor I assume must be a thorough way of pinpointing bottlenecks, improper configurations,failing chips,errors due to overheating and power supply irregularities, etc. Its one of those areas that you'll never be able to memorize all the info, but by having a good reference book and some knowledge of what to look for would probably be worth the effort.
Thanks,
DCO

 

Well, when we used them, it was taking data over a 1-2 week period. So you can imagine how tedious it can be.