Determining System Load With Windows Task Manager
A quick way to check your system load in Windows, is to use the task manager. There are other tools, like SystemExplorer, that can give more information, but task manager is a quick way to check for a process that is loading up your system.
Task manager is invoked with the Ctrl + Shift + Esc key sequence. Hit all three keys at the same time. (Note: If you are connected to a system via remote desktop, or terminal services, use Ctrl + Alt + Del instead.)
There are several things that task manager can display. The "processes" tab is of particular interest. You can select the information to display using the "view" option at the top. The ones that I find most useful, are "CPU usage", "memory usage", and "virtual memory size".
The "cpu" column displays what percent of time that a process is using the CPU. If you have a process that is loading up your system, this number will constantly be very high.
The "mem usage" and "vm size", are very useful. "Mem usage" is the amount of physical memory that a process is using. "Vm size" is the virtual memory, that is the amount of physical memory plus the amount written to the paging file, that the process is using.
If is common for a process to have a "vm size" that is much larger than the "mem usage" size. The case to be aware of, is when this occurs, and the "cpu" numbers are also very high. This usually indicates that you have a process that is doing a large amount of swapping memory to and from the paging file. When this occurs, your performance suffers greatly. You should close applications, if possible, to free additional memory to reduce the amount of memory swapping. Additionally adding memory to your system, if it has less than the system maximum will help, also.
Contact CCS Technical Support for more assistance in tuning your system.