Performance counters

What to do

1. Open w0a
2. Go to the Fix page in the left menu
3. Type performans into the search box
4. Press the button on the Performance counters card

What the card's answer means

After you press it, the card writes a line underneath. Which line you get decides your next step.

• "Fixed — N setting(s) put back to the Windows default." — this was the broken thing and it has been put back. If the problem continues, see below.
• "Nothing to fix — this was already at the Windows default." — these settings were never changed. Whatever you are seeing has another cause, and pressing this card again will not help.
• "Nothing to fix — this component is not installed on this PC." — the thing this card repairs is not present on this Windows. Your edition may not include it, or it may have been removed earlier.
• "Another repair is running." — only one card runs at a time, because several of them would undo each other's work. Wait for it to finish and press again.

What this card actually does

If Task Manager's graphs are blank, Performance Monitor finds no counter sets at all, or a monitoring tool sees no data, deletes the switch that turns counters off.

Every repair card writes back the Windows default unconditionally; it does not depend on a backup of w0a's own existing. So it also helps if some other tool was what changed your machine.

The value it deletes is Disable Performance Counters, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib. A clean install does not carry it at all — the card does not set it to zero, it removes it.

What puts that value there

An optimisation guide, or a tool following one. w0a's own Optimisation page has a checkbox that sets it too; it is off by default, and the checkbox says what you lose by ticking it. If you did tick it and apply, this card is what undoes it.

Still no counters after the card ran

If the switch is gone and Performance Monitor is still empty, the counter registry itself may be damaged. Windows has its own repair command for that — in a Command Prompt opened as administrator:

lodctr /R

It rebuilds the counter names from their backup. w0a does not run it for you: the command replaces the whole counter registry, which is not something a repair card should do quietly.

If it did not help

If the card said it fixed something and the problem is still there, these settings were not the cause. Write to us — tell us which card you ran and what it printed; the two together are what narrows it down.