Archive for FAQ

I do not see a drive letter for some of my logical disks. Instead, I see something that looks like HarddiskDmVolumessystemnameDg0Volume1 instead. What is that all about?

Logical disk information containing “HarddiskVolume…” usually indicates an unformatted partition. Knowledge Base article (Q260834) describes the ‘HarddiskVolume’ label as a volume that has been mounted, but not assigned a drive letter. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q260834 There is another MS KB entry that specfically discusses “HarddiskDmVolumes” names. See http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=274311. This KB article explains that after you convert a […]

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Why are the Logical Disk counters zero?

This will occur on Windows 2000 if you have never issued the diskperf -yv command to enable the Logical Disk measurements. When diskperf is not active, the corresponding Counters in System Monitor are zero. In Windows 2000, only the Physical Disk counters are enabled by default (this is equivalent to issuing the diskperf -yd command.) […]

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How was the problem with the % Disk Time Counter fixed in Windows 2000?

Maybe not fixed exactly, but ultimately, this problem is addressed quite nicely in Win2K (although it would arguably be better had the older % Disk Time Counters – now obsolete –not been retained). Windows 2000 adds a new Counter to the Logical and Physical Disk Objects called % Idle Time. Disk idle time accumulates in […]

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The Logical/Physical Disk % Disk Time counters look wrong. What gives?

The % Disk Time counters are capped in System Monitor at 100% because it would be confusing to report disk utilization > 100%. This occurs because the % Disk Time counters do not actually measure disk utilization. The Explain text that implies that it does represent disk utilization is very misleading. What the Logical Disk […]

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How can I tell when I am out of RAM and need to add more memory?

The best single indicator of a real memory (RAM) shortage is Available Bytes. This Counter reports the current number of pages (in bytes – there are 4096 bytes in a page) in the Zero, Free, and Standby Lists that the Memory Manager maintains. This pool of available memory is used to resolve page faults quickly. […]

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Is there a table somewhere that will take the information in the CPU Family field in the NTCONFIG record (i.e., X86 FAMILY 15 MODEL 2 STEPPING 7 ) and convert that to a specific processor chip manufacturer name and model?

The short answer is that Intel knows what these things means, but does not publish a mapping anywhere of how these internal names correspond to external products. The closest Intel comes is this document at http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/mature/mature.pdf, which does not mention either Family or Stepping names. In semiconductor fabrication, “stepping” refers to the chip manufacturing process […]

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Can I use the published clock speed in MHZ of the processor reliably as a relative speed rating?

For back-of-the-envelop capacity planning, it is nice to have a relative speed rating for various processors. You would like to be able to say with confidence that a given processor-bound workload running on machine A running at 400 MHz will execute in 1/3 the time on processor B running at 1.2 GHz that is 3 […]

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Performance Sentry (NTSMF) Version 3.0 and .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 Performance library mscoree.dll version 2.0.50727.1433 cause nuisance warning messages in the Application Event Log

Problem: Customers report the following messages generated by “Dmperfss” in the Application Event Log: Event Type: Warning Event Source: DMPerfss Event Category: Windows Event ID: 1607 Date: 1/13/2009 Time: 1:00:00 AM User: NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM Computer: HOU150NTAH3D396 Description: Win32 exception, 0xC0000005, encountered at location 0x00000000 Read attempt at location 0x00000000 …   0x7C800000-0x7CB00000) C:WINDOWSsystem32ntdll.dll (0x7C8D0000-0x7E8CC000) C:WINDOWSsystem32SHELL32.dll […]

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What User Rights and Permissions does the User Account that I will run the Performance Sentry Collection Service under require?

OK, you asked for it. If you do not need to gather Module identification information, you can run the Performance Sentry collection service under a User Account. You can only set the Collection Service to run under a User Account manually using the Services Administrative Tool, which is illustrated below: To function correctly, the User Account […]

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Can the Performance Sentry Collection Service impersonate a User Account to gain access to secure network resources?

Yes. By design, the Performance Sentry Collection Service (dmperfss.exe) is installed to run under the built-in LocalSystem (SYSTEM) account. This built-in account, which most services use, has the authority to perform almost any internal function on the local machine. However, the LocalSystem account has no built-in facilities to access secure network resources, such as shared […]

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