Don’t worry, I’m not here to give you a ten point article based on why Windows XP is awesome or why other OS’ are not so awesome. In this article, I’ll just be helping you out with the whole system memory monitoring thing. Well, I guess I shouldn’t waste anymore of your time, let’s move on then!

Monitoring system memory

Monitoring your system memory can do you good. I mean, if you do know which programs are eating up your memory, it should probably do you good (I’m not sure, but then again, I’d to write about something!). Anyways, for the time being, let’s just assume this is a good thing.

So, monitoring your system memory in XP is pretty easy, all you need to do is add counters to do the same. Confused?

Well, just follow the Windows online support instructions given in the next section, things should be pretty easy!

Windows online support instructions

1. Click Start and then open the Run dialog box.
2. Type in “perfmon.msc” in the space provided and hit Enter or you may just press the OK button.
3. Right click and then choose to Add Counters.
4. Choose to Select counters from computer.
5. Select Memory and, select Available Mbytes and then click Add.
6. Select the Paging File and choose %Usage. Then click Add.
7. You may now Close it.
8. Now click Start->Help and Support. Open and close the HelpHelp and Support section a couple of times. This is just to create some activity. You’ll find a subsequent spike in the Memory>Pages/Sec counter. You’ll also notice that the second time you closed Help and Support, the spike was lower than the first.
9. If the Paging> %Usage counter is below 99%, you don’t have to worry about excessive paging.
10. Also, if the Memory> Available Mbytes counter is above 4 MB, you’ve sufficient RAM.

Well, that’s all the Windows online support you need to set counters. Have a nice day!