Memory - Hard Faults/sec (Reliability and Performance Monitor)

I'm thinking whether to upgrade my RAM and I was browsing through Reliability and Performance Monitor in Windows Vista yesterday when I noticed the Hard Faults/sec monitor. What does this actually mean? I noticed that it went up to 12 at one point, but it mostly stays at 0 or hovers up to 4. Does this mean I have faulty RAM?

Cheers!

 

No, what windows calls hard faults are really page faults transfer interuptions. Windows stores virtual RAM on your harddrive and when the data is needed it is moved to the RAM. When your doing anything (not idling) anything you specifically request will get priority and thus disk to RAM transfers and be interupted. Each time this happens there is a 'fault'.

Unless your seeing hundreds or thousands constantly, your fine.

What I wnat to know is why microsoft choose such a horrifing name in a tool that people can easily gain access to. I guess is like the commit charge from the old task manager that no one ever fully figured out.

Short version: Your fine, its just a badly named tool.

 

Thanks for your help - and I agree with you that the name makes it sound more serious than it is! I'm all for Windows giving us tools to monitor system stability though ... I guess it would be nice if we had temperature controls too!

 

I've always had good luck with HWMoniter:
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

Download in the upper-lefthand corner and then just run the .exe to run the program. There is no installation and if you get sick of it just delete it and it's like it was never there.

If you want to control your temps, you can take control of your hardware, but thats a bit more advanced (and sometimes unstable).