Chapter 32 -- Monitoring Your System

[Previous] [Next]

Chapter 32

Whether you're in charge of a single workstation or an entire network, it's always possible that the imps of electronics will suddenly start gobbling memory, blocking communication lines, causing gridlock on a hard disk, or producing pandemonium on the data bus. At those times, you might wish you could dive into the system to take an up-close and personal look at what's going on. Well, you can't; but with Microsoft Windows 2000, you can check on what the computer system is doing. You can then put aside a lot of guesswork and base corrective actions on fact.

In this chapter we'll look at Event Viewer and Task Manager. Event Viewer is the Windows 2000 tool for tracking noteworthy occurrences on your system. Task Manager is a simple utility that can give you an overview of your system's performance. Windows 2000 includes a third program, System Monitor, that charts and records performance statistics in exhaustive detail. But System Monitor is beyond the scope of this book. For a detailed treatment of System Monitor, see Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Expert Companion, published by Microsoft Press.