Tag: windows performance

Blue screen troubleshooting tips for Windows

September 21, 2008 by Jason

Normally, the blue screen of death contains a driver name, and some addresses; if you’re lucky, removing that driver will do the trick. But what if there is no driver name on the BSoD? And what if you don’t have all the skills to play with crashdumps and debuggers?

In this case, Autoruns comes to the rescue. This is a graphical tool that allows you to disable/enable drivers in a very easy way.

The strategy:

1. Boot into safe mode (since the system is crashing when you attempt to boot normally);
2. Start Autoruns, and switch to the Drivers tab;
3. Go through the list, and uncheck the drivers that are suspicious;
4. Close the program, restart and boot normally

The steps above will be repeated until the system is able to boot correctly.

When that happens, remember what were the last changes you applied, and try to enable some drivers back – until you figure out which one of them was causing the issue. Read More»

Speed Up Windows By Optimizing Your Page File

August 19, 2008 by Jason

The page file is a dedicated spot reserved on your hard drive that the computer refers back to when it needs extra memory for programs and applications. Page file, or virtual memory is the slowest component of the memory process, because your computer has to call to the hard drive to access the page file. By optimizing your page file you can speed up Windows’ responsiveness and performance.

Defragmenting The Page File

Defragmenting your hard drive is recommended by everyone, but what about your page file? Your page file too, like the hard drive, can get cluttered and fragmented so it’s important to make sure your page file is defragmented for optimum for performance.

There are two main methods for defragmenting your page file: Installing a page file defragmenting software, or disabling the page file then running the Windows Disk Defragmenter. Read More»

Vista SP1 Performance Analysis Tools

April 05, 2008 by Jason

Following the availability of Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft is now offering additional resources tailored on the service pack. Case in point: Windows Performance Tools Kit, version 4.1.1. The Windows Performance Tools Kit is a set of performance analysis tools designed to integrate seamlessly with both Vista SP1 as well as Windows Server 2008 SP1/RTM. On April 1, 2008, Microsoft updated Windows Performance Tools Kit to version 4.1.1, permitting system and application performance analysis for the latest versions of Microsoft’s server and client operating systems. According to Microsoft, the tools are aimed at a select group of users from driver and application developers to hardware manufacturers and systems builders interested in testing the performance of Vista SP1 and Windows Sever 2008. Read More»

Download Windows Performance Tools Kit for Vista SP1

February 11, 2008 by Jason

Windows Performance Tools Kit, v.4.1.1 (QFE) is, as the product’s label states, a collection of performance analysis tools. The resources are an integral part of the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5, and essentially offer an update to WPT Kit v.4.1.0. In fact, it is WPT Kit v.4.1.0 that was shipped as a part of the Windows Server 2008 SDK. With version 4.1.1 Microsoft has resolved a couple of issues, including the fact that Windows Performance Analyzer did not execute when double-clicking an ETL file, and failed to perform power state transition analysis.

Windows Performance Tools Kit is now shipping along with Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. A mouthful both, to be sure, but if you use either regularly it won’t be long before they become just ‘xperf’ and ‘the SDK’. Read More»