Visual Basic Script to Check CPU Utilization

A user of a Windows 2000 Professional system was complaining that his system has been running very slow. He has stated that when he is typing in a Word document or an email message that the time between when he types characters and when they appear on his screen can be quite lengthy. I've seen problems on his system before with high CPU utilization and wanted to use a script that would monitor and record CPU utilization on his system.

I found a script posted on TechRepublic at CPU Utilization Script¹. I modified the script so that I could specify the time interval between CPU utilization checks through an argument to the script when it is run. The modified script is available at CPU_Use.vbs ².

The script can be run with csript /nologo CPU_Use.vbs or alternatively cscript /nologo CPU_Use num where "num" is the number of seconds to wait between CPU checks, e.g. csript /nologo CPU_Use 300 to check every 5 minutes.

The output is placed in C:\Processor.log; the output location can be changed by modifying the value of the strLogFile variable in the script. Output will look similar to the following:

9/22/2007       09:43
9/22/2007       09:48   19
9/22/2007       09:53   17
9/22/2007       09:58   17
9/22/2007       10:03   35
9/22/2007       10:08   14
9/22/2007       10:13   15

The first two columns list the date and time the script was run while the third lists the CPU utilization at the time the script was executed. There is no value for CPU utilization for the first entry in the log.

The script requires Windows XP or later. It will not run on Windows 2000. If it is run on Windows 2000, you will see CPU_Use.vbs(48, 1) Microsoft VBScript runtime error: ActiveX component can't create object: 'WbemScripting.Swbemrefresher' ^{3, 4}

Most of the systems I support are Windows XP systems, so the script will still be useful to me, but I can't check the system I wanted to check in this case, since that system is a Windows 2000 system.

References:

1. CPU Utilization Script
   By: neilb
   Posted: January 4, 2006
   TechRepublic
2. CPU_Use.vbs
   By: Jim Cameron (modifications to script written by neilb)
   MoonPoint Support
3. ActiveX component can't create object: 'WbemScripting.Swbemrefresh
   Posted By: Daniel
   Date: April 19, 2005
   Ureader.com - Microsoft community
4. SWbemRefresher Object
   Microsoft Developer Network

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