Let’s say your computer started acting funny and you have no idea what’s going wrong. Maybe it slowed down, or a program or device isn’t working like it should.

Windows Vista can run a diagnostic report to find any obvious problems and save you the time and aggravation of hunting the problem down yourself, especially if you’re not an IT pro.

Run a Diagnostic Report

1. Open the command prompt by clicking the Start button, All Programs, Accessories, and then Command Prompt.
2. Type perfmon /report in the command prompt and then press Enter on your keyboard.
3. Your computer will monitor itself and collect diagnostic information for 60 seconds.

   ^[1]

   Hint: If a problem only occurs when you do something, do that “something” while it’s collecting data so that it shows up in the report.

4. Once it’s done collecting diagnostic information it’ll write up a report like the one shown below.

   ^[2]

Reading a Diagnostic Report

The diagnostics report will show any obvious hardware or software problems on your computer. If any problems are found they’ll show up in the Warnings section. It’s up to you to get the problem fixed though.

You can drill down into the report to look at all the details by clicking CPU, for instance, and then click Process to see what processes or programs were taking up the most CPU time during the test.

If the diagnostic test comes back with no problems it doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with your computer. The diagnostics test will only find obvious problems. You might have to get a computer technician to look at you computer and figure out what’s going on.