To better manage the performance of your installation of Windows 2000, I recommend the use of Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to customize the tools available to you. To open the MMC, type "MMC" in the Start / Run box. This opens a blank MMC. Then select Add / Remove Snap In Console menu, and select the items that you want. You will probably want to add Defragmenter, Event Viewer Services and Device Manager as a minimum. When you are finished, save your changes, and create a shortcut to the desktop file you saved. If you wish, you can set Event Viewer to display error messages only: right click on Application, System Security and, in turn, select Properties and uncheck the options that do not require.

Windows 2000 is a set of tools to help you diagnose the performance. The two most important tools available to you are Performance, and Task Manager. Performance (formerly Performance Monitor) is available as a snap-in to the MMC, and can give more information and records on all aspects of system performance, see here for more information. Task Manager gives you more than a snapshot of performance, but allows you to manage applications that may be slowing down your system. For more information on how to use the Task Manager to optimize your system, see here.

Performance against errors

You might find that the performance standard that comes with Windows 2000 is executed give error messages in the Event Viewer. By default Windows 2000 performs many performance monitors in the background, including disks, system and network performance. If you receive error messages relating to any of the performance counters such as perfmon, perfnet, perfdisk, perfctrs (including common mistake: You can not read information from control device IO NBT), you can manually disable the monitors individual using the program exctrlst. Exe, Windows 2000 Resource Kit The file can be downloaded here. Just run the program and uncheck the box Performance Counters Enabled against any counters you want to disable.