Monitoring for CPU spikes in Windows 7?

[blizeH]

Hi,

We watch a lot of TV through our HTPC (Sky HD planner is always full!) and mostly it's flawless, but every so often it'll completely freeze up for around 20 seconds

I thought it was Chrome updater but I've uninstalled it, and I have no idea how to find out which process is causing the crash - it sounds silly but it's rather annoying to be happily watching a show, and then all of a sudden the computer locks up, and you have to mess around getting back to where you were

I've tried performance monitor but it just shows a graph for all useage :( I need it by process ideally

Thanks!

[Max Norris]

Process Explorer/Hacker maybe? Both of their CPU graphs will show you which process is taking the CPU time when you mouse over a spike. You can also monitor individual processes in their own graphs.

[+BudMan MVC]

So did you start the system performance monitor, and let it run until after you saw the problem, then look at the report? It will report what processes used up cpu time, etc. So is something spiked your cpu to 100, you clearly would be able to see what caused it.

I think maybe you just need to read up on how to actually use performance monitor ;)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc749115.aspx

[blizeH]

Thanks both! I didn't realise performance monitor would do that, and unfortunately the microsoft site isn't very descriptive - I'll take a look on Google and see what I can find :) Thanks again

[+BudMan MVC]

did you check out this link from the link I started with

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771692.aspx

Performance and Reliability Monitoring Getting Started Guide for Windows Server 2008

Yeah it says 2k8, but it pretty much all the same in w7

[blizeH]

Ah, that's great, thanks Bud :)

[blizeH]

Hm, unfortunately performance monitor isn't showing anything, I must be doing something wrong but I cannot see the spikes being detected by it at all :(

Is there any other software I can try please? It's so frustrating that almost every time we watch something the computer will completely freeze up for around 30 seconds, and only once per time we turn on the PC. I'm almost toying with the idea of buying a new computer which frankly would be a complete waste considering it does 99% of what we want perfectly :(

Thanks

[sc302 Veteran]

Maybe you aren't looking at the right thing causing your freeze ups. Ever think your Gpu or memory could cause you're freeze ups. Or perhaps the software is conflicting with your av. Processor spiking would be just one thing to look at.

Gpuz for graphics.

The rest can be monitored through performance monitor.

Could also be your system is getting hot.

[blizeH]

Thanks sc302, I'll give sc302 a look - though being honest I think my problem is not knowing how to use performance minotor properly rather than anything else, ideally I need something that'll sit in the background and just flag up any processes that cause the computer to die

Not sure how best to explain it, but last night for example we were watching a film (with only Firefox in the background, and Plex media server) and the entire 2 hour movie played without a slight flaw using Media Player Classic

But then, putting on a TV show (and it's done this for every episode of this show) after a certain amount of time, it will completely freeze up and the audio will loop for 20 seconds or so before resuming - after this, it plays without a hitch, so I don't believe it's overheating or anything like that

[sc302 Veteran]

how are you streaming the tv show? is it going through the plex software?

[blizeH]

Sorry for the late reply - nope I'm not using Plex, I find explorer and Media Player Classic (right from the main hard drive) is the quickest/easiest ways to watch shows :)

[sc302 Veteran]

process hacker will allow you to view just about everything going on with your system.

It will tell you what is using your cpu at the current time, what is going on with your disk, your network, etc. You can bring up the system information and it will bring up a graph, you will be able to hover over the spikes and see what caused the issue.

http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/downloads.php?bottom=1

[blizeH]

Thank you so much! That looks absolutely perfect :)