WinTop -- Measuring CPU Utilization

How bizarre is it when you're sitting beside your computer, staring off into space, dreaming of hitting it big with your own dot com, and all of a sudden your hard drive starts spinning away? What demon lurks inside your computer reading your personal data?

WinTop tracks and displays the percentage of your CPU time that is being used by programs, threads, and processes. It displays the name of each task and updates its usage figures every two seconds. WinTop is modeled after a Unix utility named Top.

WinTop used to be available from the Microsoft web site as part of their Kernel Toys package, and it may or may not still be available there. You can click here to download a compressed copy of WinTop from the Tips site. You will need to unzip the file to execute WinTop.


Step by Step


  1. When you unzip wintop.zip, you will see several files (see the figure to the right). Right-click on wintop.inf, then select install from the drop-down menu.

  2. Double-click on on My Computer, then Control Panel, and finally on Add/Remove Programs. Find WinTop in the displayed list, and double-click on WinTop.

  3. Finally, you might want to create an icon as a shortcut to WinTop for running it in the future. We will assume that you know how to create a shortcut to a program...


  4. When you run WinTop, you will see a display similar to the one shown below.


  5. The first column shows the name of a process or thread. The idle process is not really a process; it represents how much CPU time has been spent in the system's idle loop. MSGSRV32.EXE acts as the liaison between 16-bit and 32-bit system components, manages various system housekeeping tasks, and is also used as part of Plug and Play.

    A gear icon to the left of the process/thread name indicates a system service process. These processes are necessary for the proper functioning of Windows 95/98 and can not be terminated. An MS-DOS icon indicates an MS-DOS application. A generic application icon indicates some other type of application.

    The second column shows the percentage of CPU used by the process/thread in the last two seconds. Note that some system activities are charged to applications even when those applications did not ask for the service. For example, swap file compaction and floppy disk access are system operations which will be charged against whatever process/thread happens to be available at the time.

    The third column shows the total amount of CPU time (dd:hh:mm:ss) used by the process/thread since it was started.

    The fourth column shows the number of threads created by the process.

    The fifth column indicates whether the process is a 16-bit or 32-bit process, and lists the operating system for which the process was designed.

    Finally, the fifth column indicates the path to the program file.




Please let us know if this tip has been helpful. Email to rpearson@cobilan.msstate.edu.
Date posted: 01/24/00