This article applies as of PRTG 22

How can I find the names of available performance counters and add them to a PerfCounter Custom sensor in PRTG for monitoring?

Obtaining performance counters

Depending on the target system, the list of available performance counters can vary. It can also be extensive, since there are usually hundreds of counters. It is therefore not possible to have a whole list of counters available in PRTG.

To find out which performance counters are available on your system and how to add them to PRTG, follow the steps below.

Steps to take

1. Start perfmon.exe on your target Windows system. Microsoft provides this tool on all Windows systems. You can search for all available performance counters there.
   
2. In perfmon, select Monitoring Tools | Performance Monitor (1).
3. Click the green plus symbol (2). This opens a window with available performance counters.
   
4. Search for the counter of your interest, add it, and click OK. Best practice is to select only one counter.
5. Click the copy symbol (3) to copy properties.
6. Paste the properties into a text editor.
7. In the copied code, search for the name of the desired counter. A counter name is indicated by Counter[…].Path. The corresponding line for our example looks like this:
   <PARAM NAME="Counter00001.Path" VALUE="\Processor Information(_Total)\% Processor Time"/>
   
8. Copy the text within the quotes after the keyword VALUE=. Here, it is \Processor Information(_Total)\% Processor Time.
9. This is what you have to provide in the settings of the PerfCounter Custom sensor in the Performance Counters field. The counter name must be followed by two colons (::) and a specific unit (here, percentage %).
   

After you click Create in the add sensor dialog, PRTG immediately starts to monitor the corresponding performance counter.

Troubleshooting

See My performance counter sensor does not work. What can I do? if PRTG cannot remotely access specific available performance counters and shows the error message The specified object is not found on the system.

Tip: If the counter contains one of the following characters: " < > & this character will be replace, because they are not allowed in xml. you can see a list of the replacements here:

If you counter contains one of these replacement strings, you will need to undo the replacement, before you can use the performance counter with the sensor.

If the counter in xml is for example "\Memory\Free & amp; Zero Page List Bytes", you need to use "\Memory\Free & Zero Page List Bytes" instead.