Continuously monitors the CPU usage % of top X processes

I'll try to answer your two questions at once with following script:

Get-Counter "\Process(*)\% Processor Time" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue `  | select -ExpandProperty CounterSamples `  | where {$_.Status -eq 0 -and $_.instancename -notin "_total", "idle"} `  | sort CookedValue -Descending `  | select TimeStamp,    @{N="Name";E={        $friendlyName = $_.InstanceName        try {            $procId = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::GetProcessesByName($_.InstanceName)[0].Id            $proc = Get-WmiObject -Query "SELECT ProcessId, ExecutablePath FROM Win32_Process WHERE ProcessId=$procId"            $procPath = ($proc | where { $_.ExecutablePath } | select -First 1).ExecutablePath            $friendlyName = [System.Diagnostics.FileVersionInfo]::GetVersionInfo($procPath).FileDescription        } catch { }        $friendlyName    }},    @{N="CPU";E={($_.CookedValue/100/$env:NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS).ToString("P")}} -First 5 ` | ft -a -HideTableHeaders

This results in following table:

24.07.2016 21:00:53 Microsoft Edge Content Process    9,68%24.07.2016 21:00:53 system                            0,77%24.07.2016 21:00:53 Microsoft Edge                    0,39%24.07.2016 21:00:53 runtimebroker                     0,39%24.07.2016 21:00:53 Host Process for Windows Services 0,39%

1. As specified, you sometimes get:

Get-Counter : The data in one of the performance counter samples is not valid. View the Status property for each PerformanceCounterSample object to make sure it contains valid data.

This is related to process management in windows environment. While you execute query, some processes may appear, some of them may disappear (i.e. wmiprvse process responsible for executing wmi queries). Some processes may require more permissions you have. This all leads to error when obtaining process information. It can be safely skipped using -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue switch and filtered with Status -eq 0 expression.

2. You also want to see more friendly process name. I don't know if there is better way of getting that name than from executable itself using GetVersionInfo method. If such information is available FileDescription property stores that value. If it's not available then non-friendly process name is used.

you get output something like this

Name                    CPU CPUPercent Description             ----                    --- ---------- -----------             chrome           10.4988673       8.79 Google Chrome           powershell_ise    6.5364419       7.16 Windows PowerShell ISE  chrome           38.0174437       4.88 Google Chrome           chrome           26.2549683       4.87 Google Chrome           chrome           16.9417086       3.16 Google Chrome           cavwp            10.2648658       2.67 COMODO Internet Securitychrome           13.1820845       2.44 Google Chrome           chrome           675.016327       2.02 Google Chrome           7.9.7_42331    1037.1570484       1.51 BitTorrent              chrome          340.8777851       1.02 Google Chrome                                                                  

With

$CPUPercent = @{  Name = 'CPUPercent'  Expression = {    $TotalSec = (New-TimeSpan -Start $_.StartTime).TotalSeconds    [Math]::Round( ($_.CPU * 100 / $TotalSec), 2)  }}Get-Process -ComputerName $env:computername |  Select-Object -Property Name, CPU, $CPUPercent, Description | Sort-Object -Property CPUPercent -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 |format-table -autosize | out-file c:\pro.log

credit :http://powershell.com/cs/blogs/tips/archive/2013/04/16/documenting-cpu-load-for-running-processes.aspx

Get-Process -ComputerName $env:computername for remote computers you can have in csv

     Import-CSV c:\"computers.csv" | % {     $Server = $_.ServerName    $alivetest = Test-Path "\\$Server\c$\"    If ($alivetest -eq "True")    {Get-Process -ComputerName $server |  Select-Object -Property Name, CPU, $CPUPercent, Description | Sort-Object -Property CPUPercent -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 |format-table -autosize | out-file c:\pro.log} }}