Do you want to know how hard your PC is working and what? SysGauge tells it in an attractive way.
In Windows Task Manager you can see, among other things, how hard your processor is working and how much memory your PC is using. There are also many alternatives for obtaining this kind of information. SysGauge is one of the nicer ones. In this workshop we will show you what you can do with it.
to install
SysGauge can be found at www.sysgauge.com/downloads.html. There you can choose a 32 or 64 bit version. When you right click on the start menu and choose System, then see you at System type which version is the right one for your PC. make sure you SysGauge Setup downloads and not the Pro, Ultimate or Server version; those are commercial products.
Run the installation file and click Next, I Agree, install, Next and Finish. The installation proceeds without any particularities. Afterwards, the program will start and you will see a message about the limitations of the free version. Click on it accept. You are now in the default view of SysGauge.
Monitor
As you can see in the menu on the left, the default view is named System Monitor. This view shows you the current CPU usage as a speedometer and a graph of this over the past minute. Below that you will also see information about the used memory, free disk space, disk activity and network usage. This overview provides columns for the current values ​​(Current), the average (average) and the minimums and maximums during the measurement period.
In the windows with a graphical representation you will see a triangle at the top right. If you click on it in the display with the pointer, you can choose the average or maximum in addition to the current values. That is not useful in this overview, because you will also see those values ​​in the list. This option is useful in overviews without a list.
With the triangle next to the graph you can adjust the measurement period to two or five minutes. By the way, you can also access these functions by right-clicking on the graph or the pointer.
Status
The two headings under System Monitor (System Status and Extended Status) measure other aspects of the PC load. We also see information that we already encountered in System Monitor. That’s because SysGauge is built around a collection of separate modules, each measuring a different aspect of your system. You can combine all these modules at your own discretion to view all information in which you are interested in one overview. You can read how to do that further on.
New features that stand out in the two status screens are Total Processes, Total Threads and Total Handles. The first says something about the number of (background) applications that are running at the same time, and threads and handles say something about the way those processes distribute their workload. On our test PC, those counters are yellow. That does not immediately indicate an emergency. The user can link rules to all pointers and meters that determine when a warning should be displayed. Right click on Total Threads and choose you Edit Counter Rules, you will see the active rule. You can change this via edit. You can also delete rules or use several at once.
Hardware
In addition to the general overviews, SysGauge provides detailed overviews for specific system components. You can find these in the sections CPU Monitor, Memory Monitor, Disk Monitor, NAS Monitor and Network Monitor. For example, where you see the total CPU load in System Monitor, in CPU Monitor it is broken down into load by system processes (kernel) and user processes (User). If your PC is very slow, you can see here whether it is due to the tasks you have started yourself or whether Windows consumes a lot of system resources.
in detail
Where Windows Task Manager gives you an overview of active processes and the total system load, in SysGauge you can go one step further with the component Process Monitor. Here you can right-click on each process and then click on it via View Process Details request more detailed information. You can also use that menu with View Process Statistics request a graphical representation of the activity of one specific process. You can even compare processes via the icon Compare at the top of the screen.
Would you like to graphically compare aspects of system use? Then there’s the button charts with which you can analyze things such as processor or memory usage in a pie or bar chart.
Do you want an overview of processes that have been active before? Then you can switch from the default view Active Processes switch to Process Log via the triangle next to it.
Analysis
You can search for matters that might deserve your attention in the aforementioned sections, but you can also capture that information in one overview with System Analyzer. This collects all available data in less than a minute and provides a clear overview of, for example, disks that are at risk of filling up, memory shortages and processes that may commit too heavy an attack on the system.
Warnings that you see here need not be a reason to panic because, just like the aforementioned color codes, they are based on user-defined limits. They just give a good idea of ​​things you might need to keep an eye on. All rules that SysGauge uses for warnings can be found under Tools, Advanced Options, Rules.
Add gauges
We cannot add new sections in SysGauge, but we can modify existing ones. To see how that works, we return to the section System Monitor.
Note that you can switch from the default CPU usage view to any of the other counters you see in the list below by clicking on them.
You can add meters to this list yourself. Right-click in the list and choose Add Counter. You will now see a long list of available meters divided into categories.
As an example, we’ll add a counter that shows how many open network connections there are that use TCP v4. You can find that meter in the category Network Protocols, TCP v4 Active Connections. click on Add to add it to the list. Sometimes SysGauge does not immediately show the values ​​of a newly added meter. You can solve this by restarting the program. Then click on the new gauge for a graphical display.
To wish
With so much information, is there anything left to be desired? Absolutely. Hopefully, the developers will also add temperature and fan speed counters in a future release, information that Windows itself does not provide.
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