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Windows 7 Fail: WinSAT Command Line
I was super-excited today when I got home to see my fresh new GPU awaiting me in front of my door (check out the size of this freakin’ thing). Before you could say, “why the heck hasn’t Microsoft hired Rafael Rivera yet,” I slapped that puppy in my mobo, fired it up, installed the drivers and went to run WinSAT to acquire my new WEI rating (5.9 because of my hard drives… booo, everything else is at least 7.2).
If you’re never run WinSAT via command line, there are a number of ways you can run the tool. The way I chose to run it was: winsat formal -restart clean
Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the command, so I pulled up WinSAT’s help information by running: winsat /?
When I did that, I was presented with what I consider to be a massive failure:
It looks like someone copied the text out of Wordpad or something and compiling the application incorrectly formatted the open/close quotes that should be around, “forgethistory”. Also, doing a Google search (and a Bing one, for posture), there were no results for, “winsat winast” (I didn’t have those in quotes when I searched), so I’m not sure Microsoft is aware of this yet. Because of that, it’s obvious that *nobody* leverages WinSAT via command line but me… soooo, I guess that makes me the ultimate nerd, huh? lol. That, and I suppose this post makes me a, “grammar nazi” to boot, huh? Oh well.
Hey, I don’t have Vista installed on any of my machines any longer, so do any of you want to check and see if this issue is present in it as well? In a command line window, just run: winsat /?
-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com
I get the same result with 'Winast' but I get ?forgethistory?
Vista seems fine
It bothers me more that WinSAT.exe now seems to be run automatically around 1am if your score has been invalidated (e.g. by updating graphics drivers earlier in the day).
It does that even if you are actively using the machine. So you're working away and suddenly Aero turns off, you think your display driver has just crashed, and then all your fans turn on due to high CPU/GPU usage and you wonder WTF your computer is doing. You open Task Manager and see its WinSAT.exe (which I had never heard of before), then search Google to find out WTF…
…after a minute or so the machine goes back to normal and Aero is enabled again.
Seems really stupid that the user isn't told that this is going on, or that it's done at all, really, considering those score numbers serve no real purpose and don't desperately need to be updated automatically.
I wonder if it'll happen even if you're in a full-screen game at the time? That would drive me crazy.
apex2000 and Nic Bedford: Thanks for checking that out!
Leo: I've never had that happen to me before, but I can imagine it would indeed be a freak-out if you didn't know what the heck was going on. Is that in Windows Vista where you've had that issue or have you experienced it in Windows 7 as well? And you're absolutely right about the scores serving no real purpose, thus not meriting automatic updating like that.
-Stephen
On my Windows 7 machine, WinSat is listed as a Scheduled Task to be run every Sunday at 1am.
It is found under Task Scheduler Library\Windows\Maintenance
Also, it is set-up to wait for the computer to be idle for 10 min and give up waiting after an hour.
It is also properly configured to not run if the computer is on battery.
I can't find it under my Vista Business edition and it has a much smaller help section.
Note: I had to replace angle brackets with curly brackets to get the help doc into blogger comment acceptance.
Vista has it's own grammer issue: "include include"
Windows System Assessment Tool
Command line usage:
WINSAT {assesment_name} [switches]
Valid assessment names
formal run the full set of assessments and save the results
features just run the features assessment
cpu run the cpu assessment
mem run the system memory assessment
dwm run the desktop window manager assessment
d3d run the d3d assessment
media run the media assessment
mfmedia run the Media Foundation based assessment
disk run the storage assessment
An assessment name is mandatory.
The 'formal' assessment will run all the assessments and save the data in '%systemroot%\windows\performance\datastore'
This is the only assessment that will save data in this location.
The 'features' assessment simply enumerates the system's features.
This is best used with the '-xml {filename}' switch to save the data.
The '-eef' switch can be used to enumerate extra features such as optical disks, memory modules, and other items.
Other command line paramters include include:
'-v' enable verbose output
'-xml {filename}' save the XML output to 'filename'
Running the "winsat dwm" command will re-assess the systems graphics
capabilities and restart the desktop window manager.
Please see the online Command Reference for more information on the command line parameters used with the other assessments.
Stephen: I've only seen it happen since upgrading to Windows 7.
Andy: Well spotted. I didn't even think to check for a scheduled task. Must've been coincidence that I upgraded my graphics drivers shortly before I noticed it kick in.
I wonder if it does a full run every Sunday, 1am, or if it only does that if it notices the hardware has changed? I'm guessing the latter.
Mine is also set to only start if the computer is idle, though the idle limit is set to only 10 minutes which seems very low. I swear that I've had it kick in exactly at 1am while I've been actively typing into a window but I guess I could've been watching a 10 minute video and have a faulty memory.
I'll up the idle limit and see if that improves things… …Actually, what's the point of it? I'll just disable the task. I can update the numbers manually when/if I care about them.
Thanks again for noticing that Andy! I tend to forget the schedule tasks are there!
Leo
I’m on Windows 7 and just had this happen to me now. I was actually clicking around and browsing the web when Aero turned off and my fans sped up. I right away opened task manager and found that WinSAT was running.
Anyways, open up Task Scheduler and disable the task. There’s no point in leaving it on, and besides, whatever options may be set to keep it from getting in your way, it still does so.
Leo: I wonder if it’ll happen even if you’re in a full-screen game at the time? That would drive me crazy.
For the record…yes… yes it will.. as mentioned, I’d never heard of WinSAT actually… until just a few minutes ago, I was playing Mass Effect 2 (full screen, 1920×1200), and noticed it was getting kind of jumpy. (it was actually smooth through MOST of it, but there was one spot in the 5-6 minutes that it ran that I guess thrashed hardware a bit).
tabbing out, I see WinSAT was running, using 20% at first (and topping up at around 90% a bit into it)… googled, found this.. explained it well enough, but yes.. really annoying. I hate that there isn’t a simple toggle in Vista or Win7 that allows you to halt any non-necessary tasks (that is RESPECTED by all applications)… ESPECIALLY apps hiding in the base win7 install itself!
@JM: lol, ME2 acting funny was what brought me here as well!
Games, the best diagnostic tools ever made.
Same experience brought me here, Mass Effect 2 obviously the cause
Not many games have you ‘still’ up and engrossed at 1am on a Sunday morn…
Still there in Windows 7!