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What's New in the Windows Performance Toolkit (September 2023)

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Note

The Windows Performance Toolkit installation is split into multiple MSI. To ensure proper installation, run setup.exe instead of trying to install the packaged MSI.

Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA) visualizes traces from Windows Performance Recorder and Windows Assessment Console as graphs and tables to allow you to analyze system and application performance. WPA offers the following new features:

  • New for Windows Server 2022 WPA's code structure and tooling has been rewritten with early support of the Performance Toolkit SDK. With the rewrite, WPA is now a self contained .NET Core 3.1 application, allowing for extensibility by loading plugins to process any specific data sources (outside of ETL).

    To learn more, see our readme.

    Since most of the code has been rewritten from the ground up, here are a few known issues:

    • Symbols Columns can become stale when Symbols are being loaded:

      • Stack Tag
      • Frame Tag
      • Functions in Syscalls

      To work around the issue, load symbols first before interacting with tables.

    • Symbols Load progress can appear to be hung or stuck, but symbols will continue to load.

    • Regions Table not auto adding field columns. These columns can be manually added via the View Editor.

    • Perf E3 does not work for EMI data

    • URI (wpa://) only works for assessments files.

      • When using the assessment console, make sure to select the assessment file.

  • Analysis Assistant pane that displays helpful content to help you determine how to best use a given graph, preset, or analysis tab. Rich text support for the Analysis Assistant that lets you format your text to make it easier to read and parse, as well as add links to reference materials, videos, or more detailed help pages on the web.

  • List of WPA Graphs for your reference

  • New version of the File menu (called Rich Menu) with the option to switch back to the Classic Menu

  • Point in time rectangle viewer that allows you to visualize what happened on the screen during your trace

  • Regions of Interest that allow you to highlight important time ranges in a trace

  • Stack tags for creating labels that help you better identify which parts of the call stack(s) are affected

  • Support for multiple traces in a single session

  • Support for recovering a profile

Windows Performance Recorder (WPR) is a performance tool that you can use to record system events that you can then analyze by using WPA. WPR offers the following new features:

  • New for Windows Server 2022 The WPR command line has gotten a few new features and updates to improve your developer analysis:

    • Merge command enables merging of ETL traces (similar to XPerf's merge command).

      See wpr -help stop for more information.

    • When saving a ETL, Ctrl + C can be used to cancel a in progress save.

    • Export profile command enables exporting of built-in profiles to be used as a starting point for building a custom Windows Performance Recorder Profile (*.wprp).

      See wpr -help profiles for more information.

    • Start command now supports shutdown tracing to persist over reboot.

      See wpr -help start for more information.

  • After recording a trace, you can now immediately open it in WPA by choosing the Open in WPA button.

  • Direct handling of CLR symbols, so no flags are necessary when configuring and using NGEN support

The Kernel Trace Control API Reference covers the Kernel Trace Control API available in previous versions of WPA. This API is an extension of the ETA Event Tracing API and is supported for backward compatibility with existing scripts and profiles. However, it is obsolete, and new profiles should be created using the current version. No public API is available for the current version of WPA. This API enables capturing kernel stack traces, merging multiple trace files for analysis, and including system information in the merged files. From time to time, functions are added or updated. This reference document adds the following new functions:

Windows Performance Toolkit Technical Reference