If you're used to the XP-way of doing things, here's something new to Windows 7 that will attract you to upgrade. It is one of the many features of Windows 7 that I like. It is the "Resource and Performance Monitor". What does it do? It could tell you in a minute or two what is wrong with your system without resorting to 3rd party tools for a complete diagnosis.
To launch the "Resource and Performance Monitor", run "perfmon /report" on the Run box from the Start Menu. This command will open a window just like below.
Allow it to run and generate the report. It will then present a summary, like below.
I clicked on the Basic System Checks that failed. And it presented further explanations of the failure and what caused the system to flag a failure. Example for this run I clicked on the failed "Disk Check" and it gave me further details. After clicking on "Disk Check", I did a mouse over the Red Triangular Flag and it gave further information -- a disk volume is dirty.
Also, further down on the list tagged as "Security Center Check" the failure is related to my not running an anti-virus.
And, lastly, "System Service Checks" listed an "Abnormally Stopped System Service". It is related to the HomeGroup Provider. Like before, I can mouse over the red flag to obtain more information. It told me that the service returned an unexpected error code.
So in a matter of minutes, I found that there was something wrong with my Windows 7 system. And, I could resolve or mitigate the problem from the suggestions outlined by the tool. Rather than resort to a third party application, the Performance Monitor can provide a concise diagnosis and suggest resolutions. Kudos to Microsoft for putting this in Windows 7!
Try it out and see that it's time to upgrade to Windows 7.
