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Compared to Windows 8, Windows 2012's Task Manager has Disk and Network columns disabled.

  1. Why are these columns disabled?
  2. How can one activate them, especially the Network column?

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2 Answers

up vote 15 down vote accepted

This is because disk metrics are disabled by default on Windows Server 2012 because of significant performance impact, however, it is enabled in Windows 8.Use Resource Monitor to gauge Disk and Network IO usage. - Syed Yusuf from Microsoft R&D

If you need to see the metrics, you can use Resource Monitor.


You can enable Disk performance monitoring on this tab by running the following command from a Command Prompt launched using the "Run as Administrator" option.

diskperf -y


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Can the Network column not be enabled independently of the Disk column? –  Cetin Sert Nov 3 '12 at 6:08
I can't find a way, since it is disabled by design, perhaps nobody has found it important enough to allow them to be enabled independently. –  ronalchn Nov 3 '12 at 6:16
I use Windows Server 2012 Standard as my Laptop OS with adaptations as seen on win2012workstation.com so I would really love to have the Network column available for Metro apps. Hope somebody updates us on this issue some day :) –  Cetin Sert Nov 3 '12 at 6:20
"significant performance impact"? So why is it enabled by default in Win8‽ Doesn't it have the same impact on the client OS? –  Karan Nov 3 '12 at 23:11
well, that's what they say. I don't know why, but it could be because it is a server, where performance matters more –  ronalchn Nov 4 '12 at 1:57
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I found next post (at russian), where described how to patch taskmanager for missing columns (and direct link to patched at end of post). http://habrahabr.ru/post/160161/

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Could you post a brief summary of what it says here (because of the language factor and also in case the link goes dead)? –  jonsca Nov 27 '12 at 0:12
Patched binary does not render properly on my machine: snag.gy/gKYB7.jpg –  Cetin Sert Nov 27 '12 at 4:07
@jonsca, You can use Google Translage. In brief words: taskmgr itself checks for Server/Client version of OS and hides columns. –  zz222 Nov 27 '12 at 17:41
@CetinSert - if you run task manager from a separate folder, you should add MUI folder (en-us\taskmgr.exe.mui). This folder contains nessessary resources. You can copy it from windows\system32\en-us subfolder –  zz222 Nov 27 '12 at 17:43
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