11/17/23, 10:24 PM Monitoring System Resources | Understanding Windows Operating System Basics

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Well in Windows, we can monitor our system resources in the Task Manager. And that's what we're looking at right
Search Videohere. We're on the Perfo
core machine, we can see the CPU utilization per core, and that breaks that out for us.
Now in addition to that, we can see our information about memory utilization. Right now, we're at 6.20 gig of memory utilization. We also ge
Now we do get some good general information here in the Task Manager. But at times, it's not enough. We need to dig deeper. And so that
Now Resource Manager has been pretty much the same in functionality for some time. Whether it's Windows 7 or Windows 10, you're still g

Monitoring System Resources

In addition to information that is related to services and applications that can be gathered from the Task
Manager, you can also gather information that is related to system performance. Three Task Manager tabs
provide information about various aspects of system performance:

Performance: This tab, as shown below, shows the general system resource utilization. It contains a
graph of CPU utilization and a second graph of memory consumption. It also contains more detailed
memory utilization counters.
Networking: This tab shows a graphical representation of network utilization for each network adapter on
the system. It also shows a table of the processes consuming network resources as a percentage of the
total. The information can be helpful in tracking down applications or processes consuming large amounts
of network bandwidth.
Users: This tab shows the users who are currently logged in to the host. It gives you the option to
disconnect users that are remotely logged in or log them off entirely.

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11/17/23, 10:24 PM Monitoring System Resources | Understanding Windows Operating System Basics
The Task Manager provides a lot of information about the system at-a-glance.

Resource Monitor
If you need to dig deeper to get more detailed information, Windows ships with a tool that is called Resource
Monitor that provides just that. The figure shows an example of Resource Monitor from a Windows 7
installation. This application is available on all the most current versions of Windows, however, its
functionality is unchanged from prior versions. You can access this application several ways: open it from
the Start menu->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Resource Monitor, or
type resmon.exe into the Start Menu search box, or you can call it up from the Performance tab of the task
manager.

The resource monitor tool gives you a detailed view of resource utilization on your system. The application is
focused on the major resources on your system: CPU, memory, disk, and network resources. The first
section of the application is represented by the contents of the Overview tab, which provides general
utilization statistics for each of the resources. You can also select a process from the process list at the top
of the page by clicking the check box in front of the item, to filter the utilization data on the selected item or
items and lets you see, on a per process basis, how an item is utilizing available resources.

When you select an item, expand each of the remaining sections to show utilization statistics for each of the
resource categories. In the figure that follows, the user has selected the Firefox process in the top portion of
the window and has expanded the network section by clicking the arrow button in the right side of the
section title bar.

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11/17/23, 10:24 PM Monitoring System Resources | Understanding Windows Operating System Basics

The network section inserts a message to indicate that the results are filtered on firefox.exe, giving you a
means for understanding the resource utilization of specific applications and processes. The filter persists
across all the tabs, so if you want greater detail on CPU utilization for a selected application, click the CPU
tab, and the statistics that are rendered by the resource monitor remain filtered by the selected application,
as seen below.

Remove the filter by deselecting the item in the top portion of the window. Doing so reverts the resource
monitor to showing statistics that are based on all the running applications and processes. Each of the
remaining tabs provides greater detail regarding the resource that you selected. If you need to investigate a
system that is exhibiting erratic behavior, this tool can help you track down the source of the behavior.

Content Review Question Correct

If a windows host is under DoS attack, what tool can be used to monitor the current CPU and memory
usage?

resource monitor

device manager

msconfig

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11/17/23, 10:24 PM Monitoring System Resources | Understanding Windows Operating System Basics

netstat

Submit

Content Review Question Correct

Referring to the figure that is shown below, how can you determine that the Outlook application is a 32-
bit application?

the process ID

the number of threads that it uses

the associated handle names

the full path location of the associated modules

Submit

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11/17/23, 10:24 PM Monitoring System Resources | Understanding Windows Operating System Basics

Keep going! Next: Windows Boot Process

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