What Is Windows Resource Monitor?
As the name implies, Windows Resource Monitor is tailored for monitoring and analyzing the resource usage of your computer including CPU, memory, disk, and network activity. It provides precise information on which processes are consuming the most resources, as well as assisting you in identifying potential performance bottlenecks and troubleshooting difficulties by displaying real-time hardware utilization on your computer.
Here’re the 5 main tabs in Windows Resource Monitor:
In the Overview tab, you can see the usage and graphical presentation of CPU, disk, memory, and network. These processes are displayed with different colors. Processes in red are not responding, while blue ones are suspended and black ones are currently functioning.
In the CPU tab, it displays a list of processes with their CPU usage. Also, it provides details including PID, status, thread count, and CPU cycles consumed. Meanwhile, you can start, stop, and restart the services on your computer in this area.
In the Memory section, it graphs detailed total physical memory used and hardware-reserved memory. It also shows all the running processes and their memory usage. The name, process ID, hard faults, and other memory-related details of each process are given.
In the Disk page, you can see all the currently running processes, their disk activities and storage information. The columns display the average number of bytes per second read and written by each process in the last minute. The graphs in the right visualize the disk queue which is an excellent indicator of disk requests and a useful way to determine whether disk performance is able to keep up with I/O operations.
The Network tab lists network activities, TCP connections, and listening ports. Network Activity allows you to view the network consumption of processes, as well as their ability to trace sent or received bytes per process in real time. The TCP connections section highlights the remote servers that processes connect to, the bandwidth consumption, and the local listening ports.
What Can You Do with Windows Resource Monitor?
In Resource Monitor, you can right-click on any unwanted process that uses much CPU, disk, memory, or network usage to end it or its entire process tree, to suspend it, or to resume the process you want. For unknown processes, right-click on them and select Search Online to check for information.
Some processes are interlinked with others, so you had better not end processes that you don’t know. For example, stopping svchost.exe might lead to significant system instability.
Windows Resource Monitor Alternative
Is there an alternative to Resource Monitor for Windows? Speaking of managing PC system resources, you can try a Windows Resource Monitor alternative called MiniTool System Booster. As a piece of PC tune-up software, it is aimed at enhancing the overall system performance and stability by cleaning up disk space, troubleshooting internet connection, removing invalid Windows registries, freeing up memory, etc.
The Processes Scanner option can help you identify and terminate unnecessary memory-intensive programs. Here’s how to run it to release more memory, disk, CPU, and network:
Step 1. Download and install this 15-day free trial. Click on its shortcut on your desktop to launch it.
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Step 2. In the menu bar, click on Performance Home and select Toolbox from the drop-down menu.
Step 3. Under System Management, tap on Process Scanner.
Step 4. Click on Scan now to start scanning your system. After the scanning is over, you can view a list of running processes and their memory and CPU usage. Hit Terminate Process to terminate unnecessary resource-hogging ones.
Windows Resource Monitor vs MiniTool System Booster
Here comes a question, is Windows Resource Monitor completely the same as its alternative? Obviously, they do have something in common while differences between them also exist.
Although Windows Resource Monitor seems to provide more concise and real-time information to help you monitor the system resource usage of all the processes on your computer, it is less user-friendly than MiniTool System Booster.
Regular users may accidentally terminate several important system processes with Resource Monitor, which could cause serious problems for the remaining processes. MiniTool System Booster just allows you to stop pointless third-party processes and it does not grant you control over these system operations.
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Wrapping Things Up
In conclusion, this post demonstrates what Windows Resource Monitor consists of and how it works. Most importantly, you also get a Windows Resource Monitor alternative – MiniTool System Booster. Which do you prefer?
If you are not computer literate, the amount of information presented by the former might be overwhelming and difficult to understand. Therefore, you can scan your system with the Windows Resource Monitor equivalent, which is easier to follow. For system administrator and other experienced users, Resource Monitor is a handy tool to dig deeper into Windows processes.
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About The Author
Position: Columnist
Aurelie is a passionate soul who always enjoys researching & writing articles and solutions to help others. Her posts mainly cover topics related to games, data backup & recovery, file sync and so on. Apart from writing, her primary interests include reading novels and poems, travelling and listening to country music.