Using the Windows Management Console

Reliability and performance
XP’s Performance Logs section isn’t particularly user-friendly and is useful only for business users who want to create reports.

Vista, however, brings with it a far more useful Reliability and Performance tool. Clicking on this displays real-time information relating to your computer’s processor (labelled ‘CPU’), hard disk, network and memory. Each of these has a graph showing current activity, and clicking on one of them will display more details below.

With such a huge range of information on display, this section of the Management Console can look a little daunting. However, it does serve as a useful way to quickly diagnose what might be causing your computer to run slowly.

For example, if the disk graph is showing near 100 per cent activity you can click on the graph and, by looking at the list of programs in the window that appears below, find out which one is bogging it down.

Similarly, the CPU graph can tell you which programs are making use of your processor ­ – handy if your PC is becoming unresponsive and you want to know what’s causing the trouble.

You’ll also notice a blue line on the processor graph – ­ this indicates whether or not your computer is limiting the power of the processor. Some laptops, for example, slow down their processor when in power-saving mode to save battery life. If you find that your laptop is suddenly sluggish, the CPU graph can show you whether this is the reason.

Almost every Vista computer will, at some point, experience some sort of hardware or software fault. By clicking on the Reliability Monitor category w ithin the Reliability and Performance section, you can find out when things went wrong, what happened and what caused the problem.

The chart at the top shows how reliable your PC has been in the past, as well as a score out of 10. An icon, such as a red cross or yellow exclamation mark, indicates a warning, and by clicking on that point in the graph the bottom half of the screen will tell you exactly what happened. You can scroll back through the history using the slider bar along the bottom of the graph.

Task scheduler
Another Management Console category that’s only available to Vista users is the Task Scheduler. Windows XP users will find a similar, but far less powerful tool called Scheduled Tasks by clicking on the Start button, then selecting All Programs, Accessories and System Tools.

Task Scheduler is used by Vista to run programs either at set times of the day or when a certain event occurs. It’s also possible to add your own custom tasks. If you want to keep track of when your PC is switched on, perhaps to monitor how much it’s being used when you’re away, a task can be created to send an email every time Windows starts up.

To do this, open the Task Scheduler category and click the Task Scheduler Library sub-category. In the right-hand pane, all current scheduled tasks are listed along with when they were last run.

To create a new task, right-click the Task Scheduler Library sub-category in the left pane and select the ‘Create basic task’ option. Give the task a name and description, click Next and then select the ‘When the computer starts’ trigger option.

In the following screen, select ‘Send an email’ as the action, click Next and then complete the From, To, Subject and Text fields as required. You’ll also need to enter your email’s SMTP server ­ – your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can tell you this. Click Next, review the settings and finally click Finish. The new task will now appear in the list with the others.

Scheduled tasks are also particularly handy if you tend to forget about backups – ­ you can create a task to start your backup program every day, week or month.

Device Manager
The final category in the System Tools section, for both XP and Vista, is Device Manager. Click on this and a list of all the pieces of hardware currently connected to or inside your PC will be displayed in the pane on the right. It’s split into various sections, and to see what’s in each one all you need to do is either double-click the appropriate entry or click the plus sign next to it.

The Device Manager can be extremely useful when troubleshooting hardware problems. When you first view Device Manager, any sections with problems will automatically be displayed with a symbol placed next to the relevant piece of hardware. If you see a black exclamation mark in a yellow circle, for example, that indicates a problem with a piece of hardware, so it’s easy to tell exactly which part or item is malfunctioning.

If you see a question mark symbol, that indicates a problem with the driver being used for a piece of hardware ­ – see below for information on how to fix it. For a more detailed look at using Device Manager, take a look at our recent feature.

Driver problems
If a piece of hardware attached to your computer doesn’t appear to be working properly, it could be a problem with the drivers it’s using.

Using Device Manager you can check the current status of all your hardware, spot anything with a faulty driver and even replace the driver with a new one.

To update a driver, open Device Manager and double-click the entry relating to the hardware that’s not working properly. A new window will appear with a range of tabs along the top. Click on the Driver tab and, by clicking on the Update Driver button, Windows will offer to search online for a new driver.

Alternatively you can select a driver you’ve downloaded. If the new driver doesn’t work, the Roll Back Driver button lets you reverse the update.