Windows PCs provide numerous features for managing and tweaking the system per the user’s desires and requirements. It hands over complete control of the system to the user, allowing Windows users to learn more about their PCs. Windows Resource Monitor is one such feature that is greatly useful and crucial for the system. This article discusses Windows Resource Monitor and presents a guide on how to use it.
What Is Windows Resource Monitor, and Why Is It Important?
Windows Resource Monitor, just like the Windows Task Manager, is a program in-built into Windows that displays certain sets of information that tell us how our PC is doing. As the name suggests, we can use this application to check information about hardware and software resources in real time.
In simple words, you can think of it as a tool with more options to dig for further information about our system that the Windows Task Manager doesn’t include. We can say that the Windows Task Manager scratches the surface, and the Resource Monitor leads us to whatever lies under that surface.
How To Use the Windows Resource Monitor?
In this section, we’ll go about learning how to analyze resource usage using the Windows Resource Monitor. The Windows Resource monitor displays various information under their respective categories, making it easier to get a general idea of the system status. Here’s all that’s covered in this article:
- Starting Windows Resource Monitor
- Overview
- CPU
- Memory
- Disk
- Network
So without any further delay, let’s begin.
1] Starting Windows Resource Monitor
You can use any of the following methods to launch the Resource Monitor on your Windows PC:
- Press Windows + R to open the run dialog box, and type resmon.exe followed by a click on Enter.
- Launch the run dialog box, type perfmon.exe /res, and press Enter.
- You can also search for Resource Monitor in the Start menu.
Now that you’ve learned how to launch the Resource Monitor, let’s go through the Overview, CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network tabs of the Resource Monitor one by one.
2] Windows Resource Monitor: Overview
As the name suggests, the Resource Monitor overview section provides a general real-time insight into the system resources. You can get an idea of your CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network status from this section all at once, and they have their own spaces or boxes allowed for the same. Under each of these boxes, you can find readings or listings.
You can choose to hide graphs and such displayed on the screen to give more space to the overview. These graphs display resource statistics over 60 seconds. You can also click on any process under the CPU box to display its network, memory, and disk status only, making it easier to track all resources used at once.
3] Windows Resource Monitor: CPU
You can find a detailed analysis of the CPU resources under this tab in the Windows Resource Monitor. Here you’ll find graphs from the Overview tab that relay information related to each core of the CPU, Service CPU usage, and the total CPU usage. Similarly to the Overview tab, you can also click on a specific process to display its data solely.
The listing of processes is one of the four listings available under the CPU section. The other three are Services, Associated Handles that display files used by a process, and Associated Modules that indicate other system resources.
The Services listing concerns itself with starting, stopping, and restarting services only. You might also find specific processes highlighted with colors. These are not mere gimmicks and indicate the real-time status of a process/program, with red indicating that the respective process is not responding and blue indicating that it has been suspended.
4] Windows Resource Monitor: Memory
Like the CPU tab, the Memory tab also focuses on listing processes. However, what makes it different from the CPU tab is that it emphasizes memory usage by the process. You can find a physical overview of the memory distribution across the system. In most cases, a lot of memory is hogged up by the hardware itself. The terms listed below will aid you in understanding the listing in the Memory tab better.
- Commit: Amount of virtual memory reserved by the operating system for the process.
- Working Set: Amount of physical memory currently in use by the process.
- Shareable: Amount of physical memory in use by the process that can be shared with other processes.
- Private: Amount of physical memory in use by the process that other processes cannot use.
5] Windows Resource Monitor: Disk
As the name speaks for itself, you can find information about your PC’s storage disk(s) here. How much storage is being consumed by a running/stationary process is the kind of information you’ll find here. This tab lists a process’s disk read & write activity, just like in other tabs. You can also choose to filter data of a single process. You can also find your disk drive’s available space and total space from here, and the graphs indicate the disk’s health and performance.
6] Windows Resource Monitor: Network
You can find listings of the network activity, TCP connections, and listening ports under this tab. The network activity of processes is presented here in detail for further inspection and is the best way to figure out if a process is connected to the Internet or not. You also get TCP connection listings highlighting the remote servers to which processes connect.
Conclusion:
The Windows Resource Monitor is exceptionally viable for admins and users who need to keep track of their system resources from time to time and need more in-depth info than the Windows Task Manager presents. We went over the fundamentals of the Resource Monitor and how to use it in this guide, and we hope that it was of help to you.
What Is The Difference Between Task Manager And Resource Monitor?
While Task Manager and Windows Resource Monitor display the same amount of information, resource monitor allows you to look for the information in depth with separate graphs for each process, giving you a better idea of all that’s happening with the resources on your PC.
My CPU And Memory Usage Is Above 90% Most Of The Time. Is It Bad?
Having a high CPU and Memory usage is not bad in most cases, but having the utilization as high as 90%+ for prolonged hours will cause a more significant strain on the components and cause the system to overheat. Overheating can lead to component failure. To bring down the utilization percentage, make sure that you close the unnecessary processes running in the background.
