Performance on Anything About IT

Performing a Windows Performance Assessment with the Windows ADK

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:43:46 +0000

By now most of you have probably looked at the Windows 8 client or server preview build and unfortunately the most attention is given to the new Metro look, but hey there’s more than that coming, in fact there’s some awesome stuff coming I’d like you to know about. With Windows Vista and Windows 7 Microsoft also released the Windows Automated Installation Kit known as WAIK. For Windows 8 this is now being rebranded into Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit in short ADK. Now don’t get confused by the word Assessment here as it has nothing to do with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) that is used to assess your current infrastructure.

ToolTip: Xperf123 simplify Windows Performance Data Collection

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:26:06 +0000

Those of you who have been using the Windows Performance Analysis Toolkit know of the many command line options xperf provides. Xperf123 solves that challenge by providing an intuitive user interface to configure and start a trace.

Xperf123 provides the following trace options:

General Base
Disk I/O
High CPU
Paged/Non Paged Pool
Working Set
Heap Leaks
Virtual Allocations (Memory Leak)
Wait Analysis
Shutdown
Reboot
Startup
Hibernation

Note that the Xperf123 download package has the 64 bit version included of the following tools. XPerf.exe, perfctrl.dll, xbootmgr.exe,
xbootmgrSleep.exe and xperf.exe. If you are running a 32 bit version of Windows 7 you must download the appropriate binaries from here

Windows 7–Windows System Assessment Tests (WinSAT)

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 23:04:02 +0000

Hey there, today I am going to share some information I have gathered about the Windows System Assessment Tests aka as WinSAT. When WinSAT runs, various performance tests are executed for the following system components:

CPU
Memory
Graphics
Disk

Upon completion of the assessment tests, each component is given a score that is based on the Windows Experience Index. The overall score called “Base Score” is based on the lowest subscore of an individual hardware component. So what does the Base Score mean? Well Microsoft defines it as following:

ToolTip: Soluto–Improve your Windows Boot Performance

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 10:27:58 +0000

Hey here’s another cool application that can help improving Windows startup boot times. The Application is called Soluto and can be downloaded from here.

Using Soluto is a no-brainer, just install it, and reboot. Soluto will show you the applications that are executed during the Windows Boot process and then allows you to either pause or delay the application during future boots.

ReadTip: Microsoft Office 2010 - Under the Hood Investments for Hardware and Performance

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:04:57 +0000

This whitepaper highlights the broad range of hardware supported by Microsoft® Office 2010 and describes the significant improvements in performance available in Office 2010. Results from internal testing by Microsoft are included to demonstrate the measurable performance gains users can experience when performing common tasks using different Office 2010 applications. These results indicate that in some cases uses can expect performance gains of 90% or higher compared with using corresponding Office 2007 applications.

ToolTip: BootRacer

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:51:23 +0000

When Microsoft developed Windows 7 a dedicated team was assigned to focus on startup performance. For details, read the Engineering Windows 7 – Boot Performance blog post. So what about your startup performance? . My colleague Rudi vanden Dries has been using a utility called BootRacer since a few months which provides a simple way of measuring system startup performance.

Documentation, Download details and a short demonstration video can be found here

ReadTip: Optimizing Group Policy Performance

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:48:57 +0000

This is an excellent article written by Darren Mar-Elia author of gpoguy.com and founder of sdmsoftware. The article provides guidance for optimizing Group Policy Performance. Read the entire article here

Windows 7 versus Vista and XP

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:03:35 +0000

Kai Schmerer from ZDNet Germany has done some benchmarking with Windows 7 , Vista and XP. The full article can be found here