System Manager - what is it?

Over the past six years as I built this web site I used a term 'Computer Management' and have received numerous queries as to what it is. So to help out those that do not have the experience with Windows that a lot of us have I am going to give a shot at explaining the ins and outs of the System Manager.

This is a tool that you can use to manage different functions and options for the Windows operating system.

You can get to it either by right clicking on the 'My Computer' icon and selecting 'Manage' or open the control panel and opening the 'System' icon.      

This is called a MMC snap in, it is basically a small program called by the Microsoft Management Console. It has two windows, on the left is the main index of items that you can manipulate. On the right is a more granular index that you can actually work with.

The System Manager index has three separate areas, System Tools, Storage, and Services and Applications.

Lets look at the System Tools sections one at time, starting with the first major section System Tools:

The Event Viewer is a list of four logs Application, Internet Explorer, Security, and System. Now some of the information in the logs is quite cryptic, you may have to go to Microsoft or the application publisher to find out what an error code means.

The Application log is where you would find information, warnings, and errors generated by your applications. Have an application that is having problems, look here for the cause.

The Internet Explorer log is for IE  information, warnings, and errors generated by Internet Explorer.

The Security log is for security and audit related information, warnings, and errors.

The System log is for system and hardware information, warnings, and errors generated by the operating system, hardware drivers, or even the hardware.

The next item in the index is the Shared Folders, here are all the shares for your computer.

Next is the Local Users and Groups, here you can create or delete local users, ad and remove users from the local groups.

One of the most useless items is the Performance Logs and Alerts. I say useless because you are not supplied the tools nor the training required to use the Performance logs or how to setup the Alerts. Even experienced MCSE's have trouble using and interpreting these logs.

Last is the Device Manager, this is a very useful tool, you can gain a lot of information from the listing that is other wise hard to find. You can see at a glance a device that is not working and get a rudimentary description of the problem, like most Microsoft errors you have to decode the error to find out what the underlying problem really is.

The Second System Manager major index is Storage

Storage is broken down into three parts: Removable Storage, Disk Defragmenter, and Disk Management.

Removable Storage is any media that you can remove from the system while it is operating including but not limited to: CD's, Tapes, external drives.

Disk Defragmenter is a process that will defrag your hard drive(s).

Disk Management is where you find the properties of a drive, partition, format, or change drive letters of a drive.

The last major section of the  index is Services and Applications

Applications are only Microsoft programs installed by the Operating System.

Services are programs that are installed to run in the background with out intervention or interaction by the user, including but not limited to network, video, sound, anti-virus, automatic updates, and so on.

WMI Control, Window Management Instrumentation. This is a Microsoft Operating System application.

Indexing Service is a service that indexes your computer including but not limited to your hard drive and all the files, your applications and so on.

Internet Information Services, if you have the local Web Server installed this is where you would create local web sites, control how they work.

There maybe other Microsoft Applications installed here that I have not listed.

Do your own "Tech Support" with this:

The System Manager is a very useful tool, you can look at and change local User ID's, view and store Operating System logs, stop and start services, and a lot more... (And it is still available with Windows 7/8! The look and feel has changed but the functionality is still there...)