Monitoring Server Resources with System Monitor - Professional SQL Server 2005 Performance Tuning - page 33

your web servers start experiencing timeouts? Only you can determine these answers — by collecting
the data. Once you have access to this data, be proactive and configure some performance alerts based on
typical thresholds.

My System Monitor Counters Are Missing —
What Should I Do?
There could be a number of causes of missing performance counters. This is a common situation.
Specifically on clustered servers, many counters are shared and can be problematic if counters have been
updated by a hotfix or service pack, and the instance hasn't subsequently failed-over or has experienced
errors during a fail-over.

There's a Windows Resource Kit command line utility called CTRLIST.EXE that reports on all objects and
counters loaded on a system. The Windows Resource Kit can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
Once you've installed the Resource Kit, the most useful method is usually to pipe the output to a text file
(rather than reading in a command prompt window). You can use the following command to pipe the
counter list to a text file:

CTRLIST > c: \ temp \ counters.txt

A second alternative to the command line Resource Kit utility is a newer, GUI version. The GUI version
is very similar, and allows you to enumerate loaded counters from remote servers too (assuming security
criteria have been satisfied). The GUI version looks like Figure 2-5.

The main purpose for using either the command line utility or the GUI tool to expose the loaded counters
is to determine the specifics of the DLLs related to each counter. In a situation where you experience
a problem with a counter that is either missing or misbehaving, you'll need to know the DLL name
and location.

Once you've identified an object or counter that is missing or malfunctioning, check the Windows
application and system log to see if there are any warnings or errors relating to loading the performance
library. If there are no apparent issues recorded in the log, it may be a good idea to attempt to unload
and reload the counter. It's worth mentioning that even if a counter is completely missing, it's probably
still worth executing the unload prior to trying to load the counter again. This is a relatively painless
process that can be undertaken with a couple of commands. The following example refers to the SQL
Server counter for a default SQL instance:

1.

Note the path to the .ini or .dll file in the counter list output obtained either through the
command line utility or GUI as discussed above.

2.

To unload SQL Server counters, execute the following command:

Unlodctr mssqlserver

3.

Next, reload the counters using the following command:

Lodctr D: \ Program Files \ SQL \ MSSQL.1 \ MSSQL \ Binn \ sqlctr.ini