A Quick Look at WinSAT

WinSAT.exe is a fantastic free tool made by Microsoft for checking performance utilisation of a server through command line.  WinSAT allows you to quickly look at the performance of your disk, cpu or memory plus much more.

For example to look at your disk performance simply type from command prompt:

"winsat disk"

The "winsat disk" command provided the following output:

 

You can also look at memory performance by typing "winsat mem" or CPU performance by typing "winsat cpu".

 

winsat comes by default with all Windows 7 and Windows Vista operating systems, however it does not come on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.  You can however run this application on Windows Servers which can be done by simply copying the Winsat files to the System32 directory on a WIndows Server from a client.

The Winsat program is made up of the following two files:

• WinSAT.exe
• WinSATAPI.dll

 

Simply copy these files from a Windows Vista or Windows 7 client to the server's system 32 directory.  Note if it is a x64 server, you need to copy the files from an x64 version of Windows 7 or Windows Vista.  If the server is 32bit, you need to copy these files from a 32bit version of Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

What about testing network performance clint?

If you need to test network performance, I recommend you looking at a tool called IPERF.  Please see my following article:

http://clintboessen.blogspot.com.au/2010/01/how-to-test-bandiwidth-between-two.html

Note: If you are having problems running winsat it is most likely due to User Account Control.  Make sure you open a command prompt as administrator to bypass UAC by right clicking on cmd.exe and selecting "Run As Administrator".