This is really a fun game. You have a bunch of services running on a box, and users are reporting sluggish response during off hours. You have a hunch that one of the services is hogging the CPU, but how do you figure out which one is the hog?

Here is a quick step-by-step on finding the CPU hog using performance monitor (XP or W2k):

(1) Goto Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Performance

(2) Select Performance Logs and Alerts, then Counter Logs.

(3) Right-click Counter Logs and select “New Log Settings...” and give the Log a name.

(4) Select Thread from Performance Object, then % Processor Time.

(5) Select the All Instances radio button, then click the Add button, then Close.

(6) For the Log File Type DropDown, you probably want to select CSV so you can toy with the data in Excel afterwards ;-)