Assessments
Published: February 29, 2012
Updated: May 31, 2012
Applies To: Windows 8
Assessments are a combination of .xml and binary files that induce a specific set of states on a computer, measure and record the activity, and preserve the recorded results. The results provide metrics and sometimes recommendations for resolving issues that the assessments found. Assessments help you assess hardware or software that has been added to a computer.
Assessments and the Windows® Assessment Console are available as part of the Windows Assessment Toolkit that's available in the Windows® Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK). After you install the Windows Assessment Toolkit, you can use the Windows Assessment Console to create and run a job that includes one or more assessments. You can also package jobs to run them on computers that don't have the Windows Assessment Toolkit installed.
Assessments are also available when you install Windows® Assessment Services and the Windows® Assessment Services - Client (Windows ASC). For more information, see Windows Assessment Services Technical Reference.
This diagram shows the general workflow for an assessment:
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, and results that are associated with this assessment. This assessment provides metrics like overall shutdown and boot times. You can use it to compare the performance of the full reboot scenario (the traditional Windows 7 boot scenario) to the performance of the default shutdown and boot behaviors in Windows 8. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment verifies that the drivers on a running Windows operating system qualify for the Windows® Certification Program. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment verifies that an offline Windows image or a running Windows operating system contains the correct set of drivers. |
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Describes the system requirements, job settings, results, and issues that are associated with an Energy Efficiency job. An Energy Efficiency job assesses the battery life and energy efficiency of a portable computer. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, workloads, and results that are associated with this assessment. This assessment simulates file operations like copying, moving, compressing, uncompressing, and deleting files. It also measures duration and throughput to help you evaluate the computer's performance. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment identifies issues that affect the time that Windows takes to boot the computer and display the Start screen the first time that the end user starts the computer. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment measures the time to fully render a blank page in Internet Explorer. This measurement includes the load time of the IExplore.exe process and the frame-creation and tab-creation intervals. It also measures the effect of all extensions, add-ins, and toolbars that are installed on the system. It doesn't measure any network or browsing performance. |
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Describes the system requirements, workloads, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment evaluates the browsing experience in Internet Explorer and the capabilities of the CPU and graphics hardware to identify performance issues. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment measures the transcode duration and relative speed of changing a video file to a different format or bit rate. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, and results that are associated with this assessment. This assessment creates a snapshot of memory use during a series of system boots. It then helps you identify ways to improve performance and efficiency by optimizing memory use. You can also use this assessment to compare a baseline operating system image against an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) image. |
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Describes the Minifilter diagnostic setting that's available in several assessments. You can use the Minifilter diagnostic setting to measure the time that the computer spends in minifilter operations and identify minifilter drivers that are inefficient, using too much memory, or not working. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with the Boot Performance (Fast Startup), Hibernate Performance, and Standby Performance assessments. These assessments measures the transition from various computer states. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment simulates viewing and manipulating photos, and it measures responsiveness to help you evaluate the computer's performance. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment streams media in Internet Explorer by using video content that ranges from low resolution to high resolution. It then evaluates video playback quality based on the number of glitches that it detects. |
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Describes the system requirements, workloads, assessment settings, results, and issues that are associated with this assessment. This assessment measures responsiveness and rendering quality while exercising workloads that simulate user activities with Windows® Store apps. These activities include using search and transitioning from the Start Screen to the desktop. |
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Evaluates the performance and quality of Windows Media® Player playback and is used in a set of multimedia battery-life assessments. |
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Describes the system requirements, assessment settings, and results that are associated with this assessment. This assessment rates a computer's performance in several system components, like CPU, memory, disk, and graphics. Windows System Assessment (WinSAT) results express the capability of a computer's hardware configuration in numbers by using the Windows Experience Index scale of 1.0 to 9.9. |
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Describes common in-depth analysis issues that you can view in the Windows Assessment Console and further analyze in Windows® Performance Analyzer (WPA). |
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Describes common problems that cause assessments to fail. |
See Also
