Investigate memory usage with Windows 7 Resource Monitor

In last week’s blog post, “Learn How to Use the Windows 7 Resource Monitor for Effective Troubleshooting,” I introduced you to the Resource Monitor tool’s powerful features and explained how you can use it to get a better understanding of how system resources are used by processes and services. I also indicated that you can use Resource Monitor to delve into specific problems, such as investigating memory usage. Read more.

Learn how to use the Windows 7 Resource Monitor for effective troubleshooting

After last week’s blog “Track Stability in Windows 7 with the Reliability Monitor” was posted, I received an e-mail message from a reader who described their Reliability Monitor chart as being full of Windows and Miscellaneous failures that seemed to be occurring on a regular basis. The reader suspected that a malfunctioning process was the cause and wanted more detail on using Microsoft Windows 7’s Resource Monitor to keep tabs on system resources being used by running processes and services. While I was able to help the reader out, a comment they made about feeling overwhelmed by the amount of detailed information and the number of features packed into Windows 7’s Resource Monitor stuck with me for a few days. Read more.

Take advantage of tools to monitor memory usage in Windows 7

Ever since I discovered how to use the Windows 9x’s Resource Meter to keep track of system resources and prevent system crashes caused by depleting system resources when running more than one application at a time, I’ve made good use of Windows monitoring tools.

Over the years Microsoft has vastly improved the primitive Resource Meter and increasingly made it easier to see what is going on with the operating system’s use of memory. With Windows 7, I’ve discovered some slight, but notable, changes in the way that memory usage is reported on the Performance tab of the Task Manager. I have also noticed a very nice chart in the new Resource Monitor that provides very detailed information on physical memory usage at a glance.

In this issue of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll take a closer look at the changes on Task Manager’s Performance tab and investigate the Physical Memory usage chart.