Windows 7 provides a number of tools to manage system resources. The most common tool is the Taskbar Resource Monitor, which can be used to view and monitor the resources used by programs on the taskbar. To use the Taskbar Resource Monitor, open the taskbar properties dialog box and click on the resource monitor button. The resource monitor will show information about all programs running on the system and their associated resources. The resource monitor can be used to view information about how much memory, CPU time, or disk space each program is using. It can also be used to set limits on how much data a program can access at a time. To use the resource monitor, you must first create a new task bar resource monitor object. To do this, open an empty folder and create a new file called “resource_monitor.xml”. In this file, you will need to provide information about your program’s name and version number, as well as any other important information about your program. Next, add your program’s name to the element of the <resource_monitor> file. You can also add your program’s version number if you want to track changes over time. Finally, add any other important information about your program in this element such as its start time and end time (if applicable). Next, add an element to the <resource_monitor> file. This element should contain only one word: “windows”. The word “windows” should be followed by an underscore (underscore_w). This word should then be followed by an application’s full pathname (for example “C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player 11\wmplayer11”). The application’s full pathname should not include any spaces or special characters such as hyphens or underscores (for example “C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player 11\wmplayer11_x64”). Next, add an <object

Setting Up & Using SuperbarMonitor

All of the individual monitors and the .dll files necessary to run them come in a single zip file for your convenience. Simply unzip the contents, add them to an appropriate “Program Files Folder”, and create shortcuts for the monitors that you would like to use on your system.

For our example we created shortcuts for all five monitors and set the shortcuts up in their own “Start Menu Folder”.

You can see what the five monitors (Battery, CPU, Disk, Memory, & Volume) look like when running…they are visual in appearance without text to clutter up the looks. The monitors use colors (red, green, & yellow) to indicate the amount of resources being used for a particular category.

Note: Our system is desktop-based but the “Battery Monitor” was shown for the purposes of demonstration…thus the red color seen here.

Hovering the mouse over the “Battery, CPU, Disk, & Memory Monitors” on our system displayed a small blank thumbnail.

Note: The “Battery Monitor” may or may not display more when used on your laptop.

Going one step further and hovering the mouse over the thumbnails displayed a small blank window. There really is nothing that you will need to worry with outside of watching the color for each individual monitor. Nice and simple!

The one monitor with extra features on the thumbnail was the “Volume Monitor”. You can turn the volume down, up, on, or off from here…definitely useful if you have been wanting to hide the “Volume Icon” in the “System Tray”.

You can also pin the monitors to your “Taskbar” if desired. Keep in mind that if you do close any of the monitors they will “temporarily” disappear from the “Taskbar” until the next time they are started.

Note: If you want the monitors to start with your system each time you will need to add the appropriate shortcuts to the “Startup Sub-menu” in your “Start Menu”.

Conclusion

If you have been wanting a nice visual way to monitor your system’s resources then SuperbarMonitor is definitely worth trying out.

Links

Download SuperbarMonitor