How to Check the Health of Your Windows 10 PC or Laptop

How to Check PC Health With Windows Security

If you want a quick and easy understanding of the system state, the Windows Security Center can provide it. To start the program, search the Windows Security Center.

After opening, click Device Operation and Performance Status. The health report section is divided into different areas to check off any problems and solutions.

Windows Security regularly scans in the background, as indicated by the last scan date, so there is no need to run it manually.

The health report covers:

• Storage capacity: If your system has enough disk space to complete tasks like Windows update.
• Battery life: If anything is shortening your battery life, like your brightness settings.
• Apps and software: If anything installed needs updating or is failing.
• Windows Time service: If your clock is out of sync or disabled, which can impact internet connection and cause other issues.

If everything is normal, they will be marked with a green check. Otherwise, an amber tick will indicate that you can click to find out what the specific problem is and how to solve it (in some cases, an automatic troubleshooter can be run).

How to Check PC Health With Performance Monitor

The Performance Monitor utility is provided with Windows 10 and is an advanced tool for tracking items such as disk, memory, and network usage. You can start it by searching for Performance Monitor on your system.

You can generate two reports with Performance Monitor: System Diagnostics and System Performance.

To create these:

1. From the left-hand pane, expand Data Collector Sets > System.
2. Right-click both System Diagnostics and System Performance and click Start.
3. Each report can take around a minute to complete. Once ready, you can access them through Reports > System. The report names contain the date they were generated.

For guidance on reading these reports and other advanced tips on using this utility, check out our article on how to use Performance Monitor like a power user.

How to Check Battery Health With a Sleep Study

If your system supports sleep, you can run reports to assess battery health and understand battery usage. This helps to identify applications or devices that are consuming a lot of power (which may be unnecessary).

You can run it on a desktop computer to check the power cycle of the computer, but it is obviously more suitable for laptop users. For these people, the report can be used to indicate how many cycles their battery has passed, which means the number of times the battery has been charged from depleted to full.

First, you need to open an elevated command prompt. Press Windows key + X and click Command Prompt (Admin).

The Sleep Study doesn’t exist as an accessible utility on your computer, so we can use a command to generate an HTML file of the report. To do so, input this into Command Prompt:

powercfg /SleepStudy /output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\mysleepstudy.html

This will output a file to your Desktop called mysleepstudy.html. Feel free to adjust the command to a different file path or file name.

By default, the Sleep Study will cover the last three days. To specify the number of days, input the following command, switching DAYS for a figure up to 28:

powercfg /SleepStudy /output %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\mysleepstudy.html /Duration DAYS

Navigate to your Desktop and open the file to view your Sleep Report in your web browser.

The report provides you with information about your machine and battery, battery consumption graphs, and detailed information for each standby session. You can see how long each session lasted, the energy consumed, and the time spent in low-power states.

This report lists the five most depleted batteries, but please explain them carefully. Heavy use is not necessarily a problem, because it depends on what you do in that session. For example, if you install Windows updates, play music, or connect to a Bluetooth device, you need sufficient battery.

How to Check Wireless Network Health With a Network Report

You can generate a wireless network report in Windows 10 to view the wireless connection history of the system in the last three days. This is a great way to understand how your connection is used and what may cause problems.

Press Windows key + X and click Command Prompt (Admin).

Input the following into Command Prompt:

netsh wlan show wlanreport

This will output an HTML file. To view it, press Windows key + R to open Run, input the following and click OK:

%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\WlanReport\wlan-report-latest.html

This will open the report in your web browser.

The chart at the top gives a summary of the connection sessions available in the report. You can click a letter to jump to that specific section. The most pertinent ones are those in red, which indicate an error.

Also, refer to the table of disconnection reasons to understand why your network is disconnected. It may be because you disconnected it, which is fine, but other issues can be listed here, such as a controller failure or network unavailability.

RELATED: How to Reset the Windows Registry to Default and Fix Errors

How to Diagnose Other Windows 10 Issues

There is no need to run these health reports all the time. If you frequently encounter errors or notice that your computer is slowing down, it may be because your hardware is malfunctioning, so it may be helpful to run these reports to identify the problem. Remember, Windows Security Center will proactively notify you of general health issues.

Related: How to Enter the BIOS on Windows 10 (And Older Versions)