Create custom rounded rectangles in Photoshop (CC/CC 2014/CC 2015)
A number of seemingly intractable problems are caused by intermittent CPU spikes in various applications, especially background services. For example, if video or audio suddenly drop out at random times, the root problem could be a resource issue, which only becomes noticeable to the user when video or audio are playing. Once you’re able to work on the hypothesis that an individual process may be spiking, you can try methodically eliminating each possible process one at a time. However, that approach can be very time-consuming.
Various tools provide shortcuts, but one very relevant tool already included in Windows is Performance Monitor. While this utility includes a graph of CPU usage and allows you to log extensive statistics about events, there’s another way of using it that can be particularly helpful for diagnosing process spikes. To tell what process is spiking when, you can make the tool display a line graph of resource use for each process currently running. Just follow these steps:
1. Right-click the graph.
2. Select Add Counters.
3. Under Available Counters, click the down arrow next to Process (not Processor, but Process, if you want to graph the individual processes). Then select what you want to graph (e.g., “% Processor Time” to show CPU usage).
4. Under Instances of Selected Object, select the processes to graph. Even if you select all the processes, you can still get a readable graph.
5. Click the Add button and OK.
While watching the graph, perform the activity where you’ve been noticing problems. As soon as an incident occurs that you want to investigate, click the pause button above the graph, and mouse over any lines showing a spike at that moment. Note that the culprit may not be the process with the most overall CPU usage, but rather one that’s spiking (relative to its usual usage) at the moments when you’re noticing a problem.
Related posts
