Hi. As you may know, I already post a topic about programs in system32 here, and for number 7 called "perfmon" it is a very good program, this tutorial is about basic use of this program.
Note: This tutorial based on windows 7. I not guaranteed that it can be use in other OS!
1. Run it
Press Windows Button + R > type in "perfmon" without quotes. > OK > And performance monitor will open similar to this one.
2. Basic monitoring (Manual settings.)
Now we will go to use basic monitor tools, this is just for short period of time. If you want to monitor your computer for a long time you have to configure logging, I will show you later.
Now go to Monitoring tools > Performance Monitor. By default, it will display example graph that shows "%processor time" or CPU usage. (This is why this is a bit hard to use.) This is default screen of monitor without modify anything.
Now if you want to add something in the graph, press Ctrl + N or click green plus button in the upper toolbar. This window will open.
You may need to wait a bit.
As you can see it can probing a lot of things. Like Procesor, network transferring, serial transferring, etc.
Just select what you want from left pane and click Add >> then the list will populate in the right pane. After you done, click OK.
Note : Some probing may have optional instance to select, by default it will be <all instances> but you can change if you like, you may need to google a bit to set it up correctly. (don't worry, this won't damage your computer.)
Example:
After added probe (acually it called counter but I think probe is better 
.) It will be messy because all graphs will be red line, you can change it by right click at lower table and select properties. It will be like this.
Now you can change color, width, scales, styles of all graphs. For another tabs, I will not explain because it will take too long and they won't play important roles here.
Useful probes:
Battery status > RemainingCapacity : Check for current battery left. (Laptop only.)
Logical Disk > Disk Transfers/sec : Check for disk I/O (Please change instance to the drive you want.)
Memory > Cached Bytes : Current RAM usage. (Change scales to 0.0000001!)
Processor > % processor Time : CPU Usage
TCPV4/TCPV6 > Segments/sec : Network I/O
These are just a little bit of examples.
3. Logging Monitoring (Automatic)
Logging is for automatic probing and reporting. You have no need to interact wiht performance monitor to probe the computer.
Although, this cannot be graph like above due to it saves report as text file.
Go to Data Collector sets > User Defined > Right click at right pane > New > Data Collector set.
This window will appear. Type in name of collector (anything you want) and select type, I will create from template. Click Next.
Select template you want. click next.
Select folder where you want log files to be stored. Click next.
Select Open properties for this data collector set. Click finished.
This window will appear. Go to schedule tab. Click Add.
Now you can set schedule for probing, you may add schedule as much as you want.
If you want to start it now, go to Data Collector sets > User Defined > right click at your collector set >Start.
If you want to see reports, go to Reports > User Defined > [name] > select report.
This may be very short for it but this is enough for normal uses.
Thank you.
Edited by Sirawit, 23 September 2013 - 11:22 AM.
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