Performance Management Utilities

The Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Resource Kit includes several tools for managing NT Workstation performance. You'll find the following tools in the resource kit's Perftool folder.

cntrtoolcounters.hlp. This Help file lists and explains the NT default Performance Monitor counters.

logtoolstypeperf.exe. This command-line version of Performance Monitor dumps metrics to Comma Separated Values (CSV), as Screen A shows. Typeperf expects parameters that refer to Performance Monitor objects and counters and returns current values. In Screen A, I've specified to monitor Memory: Committed Bytes and the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) process working set at 1-second intervals. I can also use Typeperf to monitor performance objects on remote machines if I specify a Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path (e.g., "\machinememorycommitted bytes") to precede the object.

meastoolempty.exe. This tool empties a running application's working set. You use this tool to release currently allocated physical memory for an application.

meastooltimer.exe. This tool shows how long a particular application takes to run, including what percentage of the time it was in privileged mode vs. user mode.

meastoolpview.exe. This Process Explode tool shows detailed information per process about how a system is allocating memory. You can also use this tool to see the security token that the system has associated with a given process and threads.

meastooltop.exe. This command-line tool constantly displays the top processes by CPU usage.

meastoolwperf.exe. This graphical utility displays a variety of metrics about system memory and processor usage. This tool is similar to the UNIX Perfmeter utility.