|
|
|
|
|
How To Create a Performance Alert Under Windows XPAvailable memory limit |
By Dragos Jijau, Software News Editor
13th of August 2006, 07:50 GMT
Adjust text size:  
|
| |
With so many programs eating up your computer memory, managing the memory resources has become a must for the Windows users. There are of course many software applications that can monitor the available memory and even free it up, defrag it or refresh it, but because this is a "tips and tricks" article, I will show you how to monitor your available memory, without any installation of a program. We will only use the tools Microsoft embedded in the operating system. These tools are called Performance Logs and Alerts. What are they? Well, Performance Logs and Alerts support detailed monitoring of the utilization of operating system resources, in our case the system memory.
To get to the Performance Logs and Alerts right click on My Computer and select Manage. By selecting it, Computer Management window will pop up. Under the first category, called System Tools, you will find Performance Logs and Alerts that has three additional categories: Counter Logs, Trace Logs and Alerts. To create an alert for the available memory, right click on Alerts and select New Alarm Settings. You will be asked to provide a name for the alert. I called it Softpedia but - in case you want to create more alerts - I suggest you to name the alert in accordance with the task. E.g.: memory alert, processor alert etc. After you have named the alert, a window will appear with the alert properties. Here are the important settings for the alert. First of all, you have to add a counter by clicking Add button. In the emerged window, select memory as the performance object and from the counter list choose available Mbytes. You can choose Kbytes or even bytes, but these subdivisions are relevant only in extreme and detailed situations.
What
is Available MBytes counter all about?
Available MBytes is the amount of physical memory available to processes running on the computer, in Megabytes, rather than bytes as reported in MemoryAvailable Bytes. It is calculated by adding the amount of space on the Zeroed, Free, and Stand by memory lists. Free memory is ready for use; Zeroed memory contains pages of memory filled with zeros to prevent later processes from seeing data used by previous processes; Standby memory consists in memory that has been removed from a process' working set (its physical memory) on route to disk, but which is still available to be recalled. This counter displays the last observed value only; it is not an average.
Now, after you have selected the counter, click Add and close the window. In the properties window this will be shown in the counters area. This counter will behave in accordance with your decision. I chose the alert to start when the memory goes below 128 Mbytes. To do that, in the window select the "Under" option and provide the limit of 128. It is your decision what value to provide. For a system that has 512 Mbytes of RAM, 128 is a decent limit, but for one with only 256 you may need to put a lower limit.
By default, the information will be refreshed at a 5-second interval, but this value can be also changed to a desired one. For such a counter, I believe it is a fair value. The memory could go below 128 Mbytes per second, because of a quick process and then go back immediately. You don't want to trigger the alarm because of a little fluctuation.
Next, we go to the action tab under the same window. Here, you decide what happens when the alarm is triggered. You have 4 options: to Log an entry in the application event log, send a network message to a computer on the network, start a performance log (as the one described in the previous article) or run an application. It is your decision.
There is one more tab available, called Schedule. It provides the option to schedule, the start and the end of a scan.
Stay focused, the alert might go on!
|
|
| Rating: |
|
Good (3.0/5) |
10 vote(s) so far |
|
|
|
|
User opinions: |
 No user comments yet.  Be the first to express your opinion using the form below! |
|
|
