Introduction

When you first set up a brand new Windows XP Professional computer with a baseline set of applications, you will generally find that it performs very capably. As users install additional applications, store data, and work with the computer, its performance can slow down. Factors that affect a computer's performance include memory, processor, disks, and applications. Windows XP Professional provides tools such as the Performance Console and Task Manager to monitor and troubleshoot computer performance. This chapter looks at monitoring the computer's performance from these points of view and keeping it working at a level close to that observed when you first set it up.

Computers ultimately fail for a variety of reasons. And if you do not have backup copies of data stored on a computer, valuable data can be lost forever. Windows XP Professional provides a Backup tool that you can use to create backup copies of data on a variety of media including tape, CD-ROM, DVD, and shared network drives. This chapter also looks at procedures for backing up and recovering data, as well as methods of recovering a computer that will not start properly.