How to measure processor idle time in Windows 7
Today we are going to measure some important computer performance statistics starting with your processor idle time.
1. Click on Start and enter perfmon into your search bar and hit enter
2. Confirm the UAC prompt with yes
3. In the left pane, click on Performance Monitor (you might have to uncollapse Monitoring Tools)
4. In the right pane now right-click and select Add Counters:
5. You now have to scroll down in the fieldset “available counters” a little until you find Processor. Click on the dropdown button to expand it and get more options.
6. One of the options is % Idle Time – select it and click on the button Add >> at the bottom
7. Click OK
8. Click on the little graph icon and select Report from the dropdown
9. You can now see your Processor idle time:
10. A value close to 100 means your CPU is using less resources. A value close to 70-80 means it is busy. A value below 20 very busy, etc. To put this number into context you should do some further research. We might add another tutorial that explains all the numbers shortly.
With perfmon you can also track data over a certain period of time to get more accurate numbers.
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Written by oliversk Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
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