Need suggestions for simple real-time event monitoring.

I gave my self a time-out before writing the post so frustratrion doesn't reign. I am looking for suggestions for real-time monitoring tools to figure out what I can tweak on my various windows computers.

First, I am a visual learner, so some of the documented Micrsoft development practices in recent years are anti-thetical to my nature. For example, loosing the graphical display for disk optimization. MSFT posted an article where they indicated they dropped it because most peopled didn't understand what it meant. See? I'm not planning to rant. This just doesn't match my personality and learning style.

Second, most of the time, the issues I am trying to solve are on PC's used by the kids for homework. Microsoft office for students and such. As today, I went to one of the computers to use it to search for something. Performance was horrible. I rebooted. Then I started deleting the most recently installed games, which I'll be asked for again later this weekend, etc. Still, performance is not great. Disk frag says everything is great, but there is of course, no clue about the details there (read as: I want to rant, but I'm still good.)

So, running MMC I see a lot of events going on, some several times a second that have to do with Security logins. From some research this might or might not be normal, as Windows chatters to itself a lot. This particular PC is on a WiFi network. That's just one example. I'm not here to list them all.

Trouble is, examining hundreds of events in the event log is like geology. We're looking at past history for clues. I am hoping to find a real-time monitor that I can use so that I can correlate current events with current activity, in hopes I will eventually find either a misconfigured or failing component or problematic interaction that becomes somewhat obvious as the events wave at me while I try/check things.

So, while you may have a different approach and considering my visual orientation, can you suggest some real-time monitors that I can drop in and watch in a window?

Thanks so much, guys and gals!