Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor is a useful utility inside Windows Vista that helps you analyze the performance of your Vista machine over time.

You get to know about hardware devices and software programs that are creating problems on your system or causing the machine to shut down unexpectedly.
When my Vista machine was new, the reliability index was an impressive 8 but after four months of extensive use, the score has come down to 1.07. Maybe that’s because I extensively use applications that are still in early beta or even alpha stages.
So what is the reliability index* of your Vista machine ? Put that score in the form below and hit submit.
*To view your Vista Reliability Index, type perfmon in the Windows Run dialog. Next switch to the Reliability Monitor under Monitory Tools and note the score.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/tutorials/windows-vista-stable-reliability-index/3839/
Tags: Archives, quiz, stability, vista, Software, Tips, Tricks, Tutorials
Reader Comments
Nifty tool, did not know about it. Mine is 2.8 but the errors listed bringing that one down are in part due to my impatience (killing apps of instead of waiting for decent shut down) or areas I do not consider to be problematic at all.
For example I know that certain things make an error but still do them (like usb unplugging and such). :)
Written by Nicole Simon on 07.08.08
This is quite impressive and helpful tip. Well my score is 3.2.But how to increase the index ?
Written by Chris on 07.08.08
Well if you had 8 in the beggining, that’s because you didn’t do a clean install. I started with 10, currently it goes from 9 to 10 but I must say I don’t do alfa or beta testing. You can use a VM for that purpose. Your chart is not complete, are you shuting down properly? I also don’t use XP software on Vista. I think Vista is more stable than XP, I like it better.
Written by fr on 07.08.08
Wow! I’m impressed by my 9.04 score. Looks like I was running initially with a 10.0, but dropped when I finally found & installed audio drivers to get sound working on my Compaq. It’s slowly inched its way back up only dropping a couple of times due to crashes on our .NET based ticketing system.
And, I’m one of the few that hasn’t had issue with Vista. Granted, I haven’t torn in to it yet, but a fresh SP1 install with the necessary apps and things have been humming along nicely. Faster and more smoothly than when I was on XP.
Written by Mike on 07.08.08
Mine is 9.37! I am quite shocked.
Written by Lekhni on 07.08.08
4.64…. :( Damn……
Written by Bizztra on 07.08.08
Mine is 6.93, but it hasn’t been working since May 2008! Does anybody know how to restart/reset/reinstall it?
Written by Chua on 07.09.08
Post-install my system reported 10, but this dropped to 5.50 after a while, always steadily climbing back up again, but since April this year it has continued to climb and is now sitting at a healthy 9.66
I’m quite happy with my system as a whole, the only restarts I have to endure are following Windows updates.
The one complaint I do have is with regard to my Hauppague DVB receiver card; it never works after a Windows update and the only way to fix it is to uninstall the drivers, reboot and then download the drivers and reinstall. Not a huge problem, but a pain in the a$$. I’m assuming it may be related to my running Vista 64 bit?
Written by Des on 07.10.08
Mine bounces between 2 and 5. It’s usually on the low end, since I do a lot of software development on my Vista box.
I see three to five “xxx.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close” dialog boxes in a typical day, nearly always due to one of my programs triggering the dreaded exception 0xC0000005: access violation, AKA use of bad pointer.
Written by andrew on 07.10.08
1.84 :S, It has been running for around 14 months with a lot of beta software installation, development tools beta… Seems like I have to have a fresh installation and use it sensible not wildly :P.
Thanks
Rizwan
Written by Rizwan on 07.10.08
Mine is 2.7. I’ve had less-than-stellar things to say about Vista, however I’ve recently install SP1, so perhaps it’ll behave a little better.
This said, I think my low score is as much because I debug programs that I am building, and occasionally I do something lame that freaks out the operating system. In those cases, it’s certainly my fault the system didn’t behave itself.
Written by tvanriper on 07.10.08
Currently at 6.65, but varies between 5 and 8.
Written by Brian Knoblauch on 07.10.08
9.59. So maybe that’s why my Vista experience has been so good :D. I wonder if it will creep back up to 10 at some point. Hope so.
Worst its been was 4.84, but that was due too ATi driver installation problems & games crashes. All fine now.
I do like how it gives you the reason for the score drops & what’s been installed.
Written by Jim on 07.10.08
6.73
It only shows a score for a specific day you select, and not the average. Anyway to get it to show the average?
Written by Dominic Pettifer on 07.10.08
Bizarre — everyone seems to have really unstable systems. I’ve only been moderately happy with my system stability, but my index is 9.85 and I’ve been running since a few weeks after the initial launch.
Written by Charles on 07.10.08
Mine’s at 7.81, but 90% of the crashes are due to FF3, which crashes roughly twice a day, even in “Stable”.
Written by Tom Servo on 07.10.08
70% of my problems were caused by bad video drivers. The other 30% was Outlook 2007, at least what it says. It’s actually my Barracuda Networks add-in which has problems with 64bit. It’s nice to see what causes most of the problems over time. FF3 gives me problems on XP at work, caused by IE Tabs I think. FF3 has been perfect at on Vista 64.
Written by Tim Baker on 07.10.08
mine is 1.96..
but all my errors are related to the SearchProtocolHost.exe
don’t know why tho
Written by defcon on 07.10.08
“defcon
mine is 1.96…..”
Not so bad defcon. I think I have the worst machine amongst all the chaps :D. Mine is 1.84 Oh Maaaaaaa Gggggg………..
Rizwan :)
Written by RizwanSharp on 07.11.08
haha Rizwan
mine just went up to 2.04
reason: some vista updates :)
my worst score was a week back: 1.64 haha
my guess is that the Vista Reliability Index isn’t reliable!
Written by defcon on 07.11.08
8.77 and been running vista since 07/11/2007
Seems pretty reliable for me.
Written by Oliver Smith on 07.11.08
My Office Machine is at 10… Wow… Seems like I have broken both the top and the lowest records. For home 1.84 and for office 10 :D.
So we can assume Vista is the most stable OS for office but not home :P. Just joking. The real reason that I do more experiments and beta installation at home PC but not on Office’s machine.
Thanks!
Rizwan.
Written by RizwanSharp on 07.11.08
Didn’t knew about this utility before.
Will try it on my Vista Laptop
Written by Nihar on 07.12.08
Mine is 5.48…the only problems I had so far were with Excel 2007 as it has unexpected shut downs all the time, otherwise I had little problems with Vista.
Written by jordi on 07.15.08
it went up again ^^
2.50 now :)
i’m i the only one which has alot of error from the SearchProtocolHost.exe ??
Written by defcon on 07.15.08
Mine dropped to 3.21 after installing service pack 1. ended up running in safe mode for a week trying to stop all the bells and whistles that start up as services. Back up to 8.59 now.
Written by Pete on 07.15.08