Start a Recording
Applies To: Windows 8, Windows 8.1
This procedure describes how to start a Windows® Performance Recorder (WPR) recording from the user interface (UI). For information about how to start a recording from the command line, see WPR Command-Line Options.
WPR requires Windows® 7 or later version operating system.
To start a recording
On the Start screen, click Windows Performance Recorder.
To run the default profile, click Start. Or, to view and use other profiles, click More options.
In the Select profiles for performance recording box, select at least one profile.
You can optionally add a custom profile. To do so, click Add Profiles, navigate to the profile that you want, and then click Open. Under Custom measurements, select the profile.
From the Performance scenario drop-down list, select the scenario that you want. Unless the recording is for an on/off scenario, select General.
You can optionally record at the light detail level. (Verbose is the default.level.) To do so, select Light in the Detail level drop-down list.
To log the recording to a file, select File in the Logging mode drop-down list. Memory is the default logging mode, except for on/off transition logs, which must be logged to a file.
Warning
For longer recordings, select Memory. When you select File, the file can grow very large because the only limitation to the file size is the available disk space. Windows® Performance Analyzer (WPA) cannot analyze extremely large files.
- Click Start to begin recording, or click Cancel to end without recording.
Note
If you start WPR while another application is recording (such as Xperf or an application that uses NT Kernel Logger, such as logman or PerfTrace), WPR will not immediately detect that a recording is taking place and it will initially display a message that recording has not started. However, if you try to start a recording in WPR during the time that another application is recording, WPR will detect a conflict and prompt you with the following query:
An existing session is already running. Click OK to stop the running session and start the selected profile(s) or Cancel to abort the operation.
To stop the current session, click OK. WPR will start to record. Note that this action can impact the application that started the cancelled session. To allow the current session to continue, click Cancel. In this case, WPR does not start a recording and the other application is not affected.
See Also
Concepts
Recording for Basic System Diagnosis