Fixing Corrupted Performance Counters

Every once in a while I run into a case where my Windows performance counters go a little whacky.  That is, when I am in Performance Monitor, my objects and their respective counters display text are replaced with a 3-4 integer description instead.  I have no idea how this happens, but this tends to break other things, particularly the Jetstress application which relies on performance counters for it’s data.

Counter corruption can be seen typically when adding a counter to monitor where the performance object and counters actual names are replaced by a numeric description.

To restore the performance counters, start a Command Prompt and run:

c:\>LODCTR /R C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\PerfStringBackup.ini

The result will be that when you restart Performance Monitor, your counters again will be readable.  If you are running the x64 version of Windows Server, make sure that you replace SYSTEM32 with SYSWOW64 as this is where the INI file is located. LODCTR can be used to load or re-load as well as repair the performance counters.