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Asked: 2026-05-18T00:58:48+00:00

I’m trying to gauge the CPU utilization level during a long-running process. I suspect

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I’m trying to gauge the CPU utilization level during a long-running process. I suspect that everytime I run task-manager to view the data, the process’ CPU utilization goes down because taskmanager has a higher priority. If I give my process RealTime priority, then task manager completely locks up and I cannot use it. I want most of my CPU cycles dedicated to this process, and I want to get a rough idea of how much it is utilizing. I don’t need a second-by-second monitor, but just a few snapshots that let me know what’s going on. How can I accomplish this?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Programatically with a C API, you can use the Performance Counter API. (CPU usage is just another counter). You can use the low-level registry API to query the performance counter for data. Or you can use the PDH API (Performance Data Helper API) – which is probably what you want. I’ve used both in the past and the PDH api is easy to use.

    Another tool to help you enumerate the names of available counters is perfmon. (Just run c:\windows\system32\perfmon.exe). It is also a useful alternative to Task Manager. It also does logging and graphs. And you can setup counters for each logical processor on a multi-proc machine.

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