In Windows Resource Monitor, you can sort table data by any column to help you identify which processes are using which resources. The following procedures describe how to complete some common troubleshooting tasks using Resource Monitor.

Note

To view definitions of data displayed in the tables, move the mouse pointer over the column title you want more information about.
To start Resource Monitor

  • Click Start, click in the Start Search box, type resmon.exe, and then press ENTER.

To identify the process with the highest current CPU usage

  1. Click the CPU tab.

  2. In Processes, click CPU to sort processes by current CPU resource consumption.

    Note

    Resource Monitor saves your display settings when you close the program. If you have previously sorted results in descending order, you must click the column label again to reverse the sort order and show the highest resource consumers at the top of the list.

  3. The first process name in Image, which will also have the highest value in CPU, is the process using the most CPU.

To view service CPU usage by process

  1. Click the CPU tab.

  2. In Processes, in the Image column, select the check box next to the name of the service for which you want to see usage details. You can select multiple services. Selected services are moved to the top of the column.

  3. Click the title bar of Services to expand the table.

  4. Review the data in Services to see the list of processes hosted by the selected services, and to view their CPU usage.

To identify the process that is using a file

  1. Click the CPU tab, and then click the title bar of Associated Handles to expand the table.

  2. Click in the Search Handles box, type the name of the file you want to search for, and then click the search button.

    Note

    The search string is not case-sensitive, and wildcard characters are not supported. You can type all or part of the file name or path in the search box. For example, searching for c:\windows will return all files with c:\windows as part of the file path.

  3. Review the results to identify the process using the file.

To identify the network address that a process is connected to

  1. Click the Network tab, and then click the title bar of TCP Connections to expand the table.

  2. Locate the process whose network connection you want to identify. If there are a large number of entries in the table, you can click Image to sort by executable file name.

  3. Review the Remote Address and Remote Port columns to see which network address and port the process is connected to.

To view available space on all storage devices

  • Click the Disk tab, and then click the title bar of Storage to expand the table. The Available Space column displays the amount of free space, in megabytes (MB), for each physical disk on the system.

To view the amount of memory available to programs

  1. Click the Memory tab.

  2. In Physical Memory, review the Available to Programs value. Available memory is the combined total of standby memory and free memory. Free memory includes zero page memory.

Additional references

  • Overview of Windows Resource Monitor
  • Filter Resource Monitor Data