I have two suggestions:
1) You can use Performance Monitor (found under "Administrative
Tools," "Performance").
If the graph is running (assuming you want to start a new graph),
delete the existing counters by clicking on the graph space, and
either hitting the Delete key, or by clicking the "X" button located
above the graph. Add counters by typing "Ctrl-I" or by using the "+"
key located above the graph. In the Add Counters dialog box, select
"Process" (not "Processor") as the performance object. If you're
concerned about processor usage, select "% Processor Time" as the
counter from the left-hand list, and "All instances" (or any of the
specific process instances you want to watch) from the right-hand
list. Click the Add button in the dialog box, and then close the
dialog.
Alternatively, you can write the results to a log file, rather than to
the screen. This way, you can later "replay" the results on the
screen graph, or import the data in a spreadsheet application. Select
"Counter Logs" under "Performance Logs and Alerts" (left-hand pane).
Right-click in the right-hand pane and choose "New Log Settings."
After giving the settings a collective name, add counters using the
Add button under the Counters list box in the center of the dialog
box. Adding the process counters is the same process as previously
described. You can enter an interval time in this dialog box, as
well.
The chief drawback to this method is that once you choose the
processes to monitor, those will be the only ones charted (or logged).
Performance Monitor won't add new processes that pop up in the
meantime, so this won't work too well if the problem is a rogue
process that starts and stops itself at unpredictable times.
Otherwise, this will catch your processor-hogging app.
The good news: it's free, and you can monitor remote computers.
2) One third-party app that seems to do the same thing is Monitor
Magic, from Tools4ever:
http://www.tools4ever.com/products/monitormagic/. It creates nifty
graphs, and has a host of other capabilities, as well. Most
important, though, is that it apparently has the same limitation as
Windows Performance Monitor---you must manually specify which
processes to watch.
I downloaded the demo and read the help file---everything I saw told
me that process monitoring is done on a static set of processes.
-------M |
