Using the Reliability Monitor to track and fix Vista malfunctions

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In this tutorial Iâ€™ll show you how to use the Reliability Monitor to track down and fix Windows Vistaâ€™s malfunctions.

Just like the previous Windows versions, Vista comes with a pack of really useful tools that are not as easy to find as Minesweeper. One of them is the Reliability Monitor, a tool that is able to display a graph of software installs and uninstalls and all the error events that occurred and have been recorded.

Starting the Reliability Monitor

The easiest way to bring the Reliability Monitor on your screen is to click on the Start orb, in the search bar type reli and select Reliability and Performance Monitor. Now click on Reliability Monitor.

Reliability Index

The Reliability Monitor gives you a value for the "Reliability Index" (top right-hand corner) for a certain period of time. Its value starts at 10 and can go down or not, depending on how smoothly Vista runs on your computer. Some applications may crash in Vista especially when upgrading from Windows XP (due to their incompatility with Microsoft's new OS) and this is going to lead to a smaller index value.

The index is updated daily, so after a week or two, you can look back and see what applications or hardware components have problems on a regular basis. At this time troubleshooting them can be tricky, and in some cases you may even need to stop using certain programs and change hardware parts to ensure your Vista PC works the right way.

Tracking down and fixing malfunctions

Whenever thereâ€™s a malfunction in Windows Vista, the Reliability Monitor records the date and the events that happened prior to the malfunction and displays them in the System Stability Chart. (the errors are marked with a small red circle with an x inside it â€“ see picture bellow). So if your Windows Vista froze you could investigate what happened prior to the error and hopefully find the source.

Let me give you an example. The picture bellow illustrates the System Stability Chart on May 29. Notice that I did not shut down the computer properly (see Miscellaneous Failures section at the bottom) because my Windows froze. We can also see what happened prior to the windows failure. Have a look at the Software (Un)Installs that shows what I have previously installed:

A software called Amnesty Generator
Updates for Windows Defender
Some USB drivers

All of these installs might have caused my windows to crash. What to do in this case is wait and see if the problem persist, and if it does, try uninstalling the software or restore your system to an earlier date.