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System monitor
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A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor resources and performance in a computer system. Software monitors occur more commonly, sometimes as a part of a widget engine and these monitoring systems are often used to keep track of system resources, such as CPU usage and frequency, or the amount of free RAM. Other possible displays may include the date and time, system uptime, computer name, username, data, fan speeds, and the voltages being provided by the power supply. Less common are hardware-based systems monitoring similar information, customarily these occupy one or more drive bays on the front of the computer case, and either interface directly with the system hardware or connect to a software data-collection system via USB. With either approach to gathering data, the system displays information on a small LCD panel or on series of small analog or LED numeric displays. Some hardware-based system monitors also allow direct control of fan speeds, a few very high-end models of hardware system monitor are designed to interface with only a specific model of motherboard. These systems directly utilize the sensors built into the system, providing more detailed, single system, Distributed, I²C Network monitoring Mean time between failures Intelligent Platform Management Interface System profiler Monitoring a Linux System with X11/Console/Web-Based Tools
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Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system
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Windows 7
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Windows 7 is a personal computer operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a part of the Windows NT family of operating systems, Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22,2009, and became generally available on October 22,2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7s server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time, Windows 7 continued improvements on Windows Aero with the addition of a redesigned taskbar that allows applications to be pinned to it, and new window management features. Other new features were added to the system, including libraries, the new file sharing system HomeGroup. A new Action Center interface was added to provide an overview of system security and maintenance information. Windows 7 also shipped with updated versions of several applications, including Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player. Windows 7 was a success for Microsoft, even prior to its official release. Originally, a version of Windows codenamed Blackcomb was planned as the successor to Windows XP, major features were planned for Blackcomb, including an emphasis on searching and querying data and an advanced storage system named WinFS to enable such scenarios. However, an interim, minor release, codenamed Longhorn, was announced for 2003, by the middle of 2003, however, Longhorn had acquired some of the features originally intended for Blackcomb. Development of Longhorn was also restarted, and thus delayed, in August 2004, a number of features were cut from Longhorn. Blackcomb was renamed Vienna in early 2006, as such, adoption of Vista in comparison to XP remained somewhat low. In July 2007, six months following the release of Vista, it was reported that the next version of Windows would then be codenamed Windows 7. Bill Gates, in an interview with Newsweek, suggested that Windows 7 would be more user-centric, Gates later said that Windows 7 would also focus on performance improvements. Senior Vice President Bill Veghte stated that Windows Vista users migrating to Windows 7 would not find the kind of device compatibility issues they encountered migrating from Windows XP, an estimated 1,000 developers worked on Windows 7. These were broadly divided into core operating system and Windows client experience, in October 2008, it was announced that Windows 7 would also be the official name of the operating system. The first external release to select Microsoft partners came in January 2008 with Milestone 1, at PDC2008, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 7 with its reworked taskbar. On December 27,2008, the Windows 7 Beta was leaked onto the Internet via BitTorrent. According to a performance test by ZDNet, Windows 7 Beta beat both Windows XP and Vista in several key areas, including boot and shutdown time and working with files, such as loading documents
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Windows Vista
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Windows Vista is an operating system by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs and media center PCs. Development was completed on 8 November 2006, and over the three months, it was released in stages to computer hardware and software manufacturers, business customers. On 30 January 2007, it was released worldwide and was available for purchase. It was succeeded by Windows 7, which was released to manufacturing on 22 July 2009, Vista aimed to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network, using peer-to-peer technology to simplify sharing files and media between computers and devices. Windows Vista included version 3.0 of the. NET Framework, Microsofts primary stated objective with Windows Vista was to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system. One common criticism of Windows XP and its predecessors was their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses, Microsoft stated that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, thus delaying its completion. While these new features and security improvements have garnered positive reviews, Vista has also been the target of much criticism, as a result of these and other issues, Windows Vista had seen initial adoption and satisfaction rates lower than Windows XP. In May 2010, Windows Vistas market share had a range from 15% to 26%. On 22 October 2010, Microsoft ceased sales of copies of Windows Vista. As of March 2017, Vistas market share was 0. 72%, Microsoft stopped providing mainstream support for Windows Vista on 10 April 2012. Extended support will end on 11 April 2017, Microsoft began work on Windows Vista, known at the time by its codename Longhorn, in May 2001, five months before the release of Windows XP. It was originally expected to ship sometime late in 2003 as a step between Windows XP and Blackcomb, which was planned to be the companys next major operating system release. Gradually, Longhorn assimilated many of the important new features and technologies slated for Blackcomb, in some builds of Longhorn, their license agreement said For the Microsoft product codenamed Whistler. Many of Microsofts developers were also re-tasked to build updates to Windows XP, faced with ongoing delays and concerns about feature creep, Microsoft announced on 27 August 2004, that it had revised its plans. Longhorn became known as Vista in 2005, the early development stages of Longhorn were generally characterized by incremental improvements and updates to Windows XP. After several months of relatively little news or activity from Microsoft with Longhorn, Microsoft released Build 4008 and it was also privately handed out to a select group of software developers. An optional new taskbar was introduced that was thinner than the previous build, the most notable visual and functional difference, however, came with Windows Explorer. The incorporation of the Plex theme made blue the dominant color of the entire application, the Windows XP-style task pane was almost completely replaced with a large horizontal pane that appeared under the toolbars
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Windows Server 2008
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Windows Server 2008 is one of Microsoft Windows server line of operating systems. Released to manufacturing on February 4,2008, and officially released on February 27,2008, it is the successor to Windows Server 2003, a second release, named Windows Server 2008 R2, was released to manufacturing on July 22,2009. Originally known as Windows Server Codename Longhorn, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced its official title during his address at WinHEC16 May 2007. Beta 1 was released on 27 July 2005, Beta 2 was announced and released on 23 May 2006 at WinHEC2006, Release Candidate 0 was released to the general public on 24 September 2007 and Release Candidate 1 was released to the general public on 5 December 2007. Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing on 4 February 2008, processors and memory devices are modeled as Plug and Play devices, to allow hot-plugging of these devices. Windows Server 2008 includes a variation of installation called Server Core, Server Core is a significantly scaled-back installation where no Windows Explorer shell is installed. All configuration and maintenance is done entirely through command-line interface windows, however, Notepad and some control panel applets, such as Regional Settings, are available. Server Core does not include the. NET Framework, Internet Explorer, Server Core can also be used to create a cluster with high availability using failover clustering or network load balancing. Active Directory roles are expanded with identity, certificate, and rights management services and this role of Active Directory is being renamed as Active Directory Domain Services. Identity and certificate services allow administrators to manage accounts and the digital certificates that allow them to access certain services. Identity Integration Feature Pack is included as Active Directory Metadirectory Services, each of these services represents a server role. Windows Server 2008 offers high availability to services and applications through Failover Clustering, most server features and roles can be kept running with little to no downtime. In Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, the way clusters are qualified changed significantly with the introduction of the cluster validation wizard, the cluster validation wizard is a feature that is integrated into failover clustering in Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. With the cluster validation wizard, an administrator can run a set of focused tests on a collection of servers that are intended to use as nodes in a cluster and this feature is only available in Enterprise and Datacenter editions of Windows Server. The operating system now features S. M. A. R. T, detection techniques to help determine when a hard disk may fail. Hyper-V is hypervisor-based virtualization software, forming a part of Microsofts virtualization strategy. It virtualizes servers on an operating systems kernel layer and it can be thought of as partitioning a single physical server into multiple small computational partitions. Hyper-V includes the ability to act as a Xen virtualization hypervisor host allowing Xen-enabled guest operating systems to run virtualized
6.
Task Manager (Windows)
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Task Manager, previously known as Windows Task Manager, is a task manager, system monitor, and startup manager included with Microsoft Windows systems. The Task Manager can also be used to set priorities, processor affinity, forcibly terminate processes. Windows Task Manager was introduced with Windows NT4.0, previous versions of Windows NT included the Task List application, which had far fewer features. The task list was capable of listing currently running processes and killing them, in Windows XP only, a Shutdown menu is also present that allows access to Standby, Hibernate, Turn off, Restart, Log Off, and Switch User. Windows 3. x and Windows 9x had a known as tasks to display the programs currently running. This file was executed by running the taskman. exe file from the Windows folder, the Applications tab in Task Manager shows a list of programs currently running. A set of rules determines whether a process appears on this tab or not, most applications that have a taskbar entry will appear on this tab, but this is not always the case. Right-clicking any of the applications in the list allows switching to that application, ending the application, choosing to End Task from the Applications tab causes a request to be sent to the application for it to terminate. This is different from what happens when End Process is chosen from the Processes tab, the Processes tab shows a list of all running processes on the system. This list includes Windows Services and processes from other accounts, prior to Windows XP, process names longer than 15 characters in length are truncated. Beginning with Windows XP, the Delete key can also be used to terminate processes on the Processes tab, right-clicking a process in the list allows changing the priority the process has, setting processor affinity, and allows the process to be ended. Choosing to End Process causes Windows to immediately kill the process, choosing to End Process Tree causes Windows to immediately kill the process, as well as all processes directly or indirectly started by that process. Unlike choosing End Task from the Applications tab, when choosing to End Process the program is not given warning nor a chance to clean up before ending. However, when a process that is running under a security context different from the one of the process which issued the call to TerminateProcess, the use of the KILL command line utility is required. By default the processes tab shows the user account the process is running under, the amount of CPU, there are many more columns that can be shown by choosing Select columns. The performance tab shows overall statistics about the performance, most notably the overall amount of CPU usage. A chart of recent usage for both of these values is shown, Details about specific areas of memory are also shown. There is an option to break the CPU usage graph into two sections, kernel mode time and user mode time, many device drivers, and core parts of the operating system run in kernel mode, whereas user applications run in user mode
