Collecting Data Using Xperf for High CPU utilization of a process

  • Article

We can investigate the high CPU utilization for a process using xperf tool.

Please download it from here https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=8279 and choose following installation option while installing it.

 

It would install windows performance tool kit in c:\program files and you will find a folder by this name in program files. Please copy all the files in this folder , create a folder in C drive with name xperf(you can give it any name ) and paste all the files copied from performance tool kit folder( this step is to ease the process of data capture).

Note: Please add DisablePagingExecutive reg key to collect xperf data using method given below

Open an elevated command prompt and run following command to enable the key for xperf

REG ADD "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" -v DisablePagingExecutive -d 0x1 -t REG_DWORD -f

Reboot the server to activate this key. 

Collection of Data

Please follow the below steps while doing repro of the issue or when the issue is happening.

 Open an elevated command prompt and go to c:\xperf . Then type following command

 xperf.exe –on Latency –stackWalk Profile

Then after 2 to 3 minutes on the command prompt type following command

 xperf -d HighCPU.etl

 you should have file HighCPU.etl in the xperf folder. About how to analyze this data please refer to following video

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyabPTXHYb8]

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2012
    Great article.  

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2013
    Great Article, one suggestion though.  Maybe go into a better explanatino of how to configure symbols.

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2015
    Great! Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2016
    The comment has been removed