How to set up administrative alerts in Windows XP

This article describes how to set up administrative alerts in Windows XP. You can receive notifications of computer problems by creating an alert. When computer performance measurements indicate a problem, the alert that you created performs the action that you specified, such as sending a message or starting a program. You can use such alerts to monitor critical computers such as servers that provide services for network users, or workstations that must always be available.

Creating alerts

Note You must be logged on as an administrator or as a member of the Administrators group to complete this procedure. If your computer is connected to a network, network policy settings may also prevent you from completing this procedure.

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type perfmon.msc in the Open box to start the Performance snap-in.
2. In the Performance snap-in, click the plus sign (+) next to the Performance Logs and Alerts object in the Console pane. The object expands to reveal its child objects.
3. To create a new alert, right-click the Alerts object in the Console pane, and then click New Alert Settings. Type a name for the alert, and then click OK.
4. On the General tab, optionally type a comment to describe the alert. In the Counters section, click Add to specify the performance counter that you want to monitor for this alert:
   1. Select the local computer or a remote computer.
   2. Select the performance object that you want to use.
   3. Click All counters to monitor all counters for this performance object. To specify one or more counters, click an individual counter, and then click Add. Repeat this action to add additional counters. (For detailed information about a counter, click the counter, and then click Explain).
   4. Click Close to return to the alert's properties.
   5. Specify the value for each counter that will trigger the administrative alert. The value types vary by performance object.
   6. Specify the interval for sampling the value of the selected counters.
   7. Specify the user name and password under which monitoring occurs, if that user is not you.
5. On the Action tab, specify the type of alert. You can send a message to a logged-on user or to a computer, you can start a program (for example, a program that calls a beeper number), or you can do both. You can also use the options on the Action tab to establish configuration settings for writing details of the performance event to a log.
6. On the Schedule tab, specify the time to begin monitoring the counters, and the duration for monitoring.

For additional information about how to create an administrative alert that is triggered when you receive a Stop error, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: