A built-in tool in Windows, the Performance Monitor or “Perfmon”, allows you to diagnose system performance and identify the apps or programs that slow down the Windows system. The app does a lot more, but performance is what we'll focus on in this article.
Sometimes Windows is slow, but you have no idea why. You can look in task management to identify the processes that slow down the system. In addition to task management, you can also use the performance monitor. Both provide insight into system processes and performance. This is how to set up the performance monitor to understand why Windows is slow and which process of which app is responsible for it.
Use Performance Monitor
To identify the process that is slowing down Windows, first open the performance monitor. Right-click on the start button. Click Run.
In the run window type:
perfmon
Click Data Collector Sets in the left menu. Then click on System. Here you will see two predefined system tests.
Right-click on the “System Performance” test. Then click Start.
The system performance test is started. This takes about just over 1 minute. In the meantime, you can use the computer as usual. If you want to identify certain processes as slowing down, make sure those app(s) are running before running the system performance test. You can restart the test several times.
If the system performance test via perfmon has been completed, you must open the report.
Click on Reports in the menu on the left. Then click on System. Click on System Performance. You will now see a report with the user name, date/time and the serial number. Double-click the report to open.
I recommend if you are not too technical to look at the summary. Here, under the text “First process group”, you will see the process that Windows slowed down the most when the performance test was started. In this example it is “Chrome.exe” from the Google Chrome browser.
You can also view the other results by clicking open the different subcategories in the report. You can use the results to determine what actions you need to take to get a Make your slow Windows computer faster again.
I hope this has helped identify why Windows is slow. Thank you for reading!