Question

where are xp's task manager "VM Size" & other columns, in vista & process explorer?

Asked by: dgrrr

In Windows XP, the three "columns" of task explorer / processes that I use are CPU, Mem Usage and VM Size.

What are the analagous columns / indicators in
(1) sysinternals process explorer?
(2) windows vista task manager?
(3) windows vista performance monitor?

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Asked On
2009-07-17 at 19:26:38ID24580784
Topics

Windows XP Operating System

,

Windows Vista

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Answers

 

by: gtworekPosted on 2009-07-17 at 19:41:13ID: 24884556

Task Manager is rather home user utility so column names may sound strange and give you not very accurate information about item displayed...
In each of these tool you've enumerated you can select columns to display. i.e. in process explorer you can use Virtual Size and Privete bytes but sometimes Working Set is more useful...
In Vista you can use Private Working Set and Commit Size.

You can read about exact meaning of these values (and many other items!) in "Windows Internals" book from MSPrees. 4th edition covers XP&2003. 5th edition is more Vista&2008 focused, but memory management doesn't differ so much in this area.

 

by: qz8dswPosted on 2009-07-17 at 20:21:36ID: 24884645

For Vista Task Manager
CPU is there (CPU Usage for the process)
Working set (Memory) would = Mem Usage
Memory (Private Bytes) would = VM Size

Process explorer has much the same, as does Vista Performance monitor.

 

by: dgrrrPosted on 2009-07-18 at 21:59:45ID: 24888361

Thanks you guys.

So maybe I should update my understanding -- In XP, If I am trying to evaluate why a PC is slow, I often go to performance monitor. the three lines shown by default are usually:

pages/sec
avg disc queue length
% processor time


I'm assuming that these three things are,  respectively
memory / ram usage
hard drive access (for virtual memory/page file or other purposes)
cpu usage

So when one of them is misbehaving (at max allthe time, along the top side of the chart), I go to into task manager to see which process is at the top of the respective columns?

cpu
mem usage
vm size

Are these the right indicators I should be using for this purpose?

thx

 

by: qz8dswPosted on 2009-07-18 at 22:19:59ID: 24888401

For a mis-behaving process there can be alot to look at, but for the basic columns they are OK.
I've generally found one of those 3 to be the issue, but sometimes not.
However the avg disc queue length does not equate to page file directly. As you noted it could just be the process is thrashing the disk for a good reason (Think of a disk defragmentor and how much disk work it could do if poorly written)

For Vista (And I did the same in XP, just different column names) I have CPU, Working Set (Memory), Memory private bytes (For the page file), I/O Read Bytes (Disk access Read) , I/O Write Bytes (Disk access Write), and I/O other bytes.
The other bytes is interesting some times, As a general description it's non disk related I/O, so network "generally".

That gives me a general idea of whats going on and what needs more investigation as a rule of thumb.
Sometimes in hard to find situations I need to do performance monitoring but thats generally more servers or to find WHAT disk is thrashing if more than one hard disk is installed rather than a workstation I use/know.

Cheers,
Terry

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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