Applications Systems

AppInsight for Active Directory performance counters appear as Unknown and fail during SAM polling

This article describes how a Windows issue related to the NTDS category can cause AppInsight for Active Directory performance counters to appear as Unknown and fail when polling domain controllers in SolarWinds SAM. It includes a workaround that involves rebuilding Windows NT Directory Services (NTDS) performance counters.

First published date

8/12/2019 9:18 PM

Last published date

7/17/2025 3:49 PM

Overview

This article provides information about an issue where AppInsights for Active Directory fails to poll domain controllers properly. In some scenarios, the following behavior or symptoms may be found:

AppInsight for Active Directory fails with the message of "Performance counter is not found. the specified object is not found in the system"
In the APM log at C:\ProgramData\SolarWinds\Logs\APM, the message appears "ErrorCode:Unhandled, OSError:0x80131500. Message: Unable to collect WMI mapping information for given category value: NTDS"

Product section

Server Application Monitor

Cause

This issue occurs because the NTDS performance counters are missing, and SolarWinds Platform is unable to poll information from the domain controller. There are multiple reasons why the performance counters are missing, but not limited to the following:

Role removal or incomplete promotion or demotion
NTDS DLL registration issues
Corrupted or incomplete performance counter registry entries
Permissions or security hardening
Counters manually disabled (or disabled by monitoring tools)
Windows updates or patches

Microsoft recommends rebuilding the counter immediately to resolve the issue. If the problem persists, it is recommended to discuss it with Microsoft to understand why performance counters are missing.

How to manually rebuild Performance Counters for Windows Server 2008 64bit or Windows Server 2008 R2 systems

Resolution

To resolve this issue, rebuild NTDS performance counters using the Microsoft documentation below.

SolarWinds recommends the following posts for reference:

Disclaimer: Please note, any content posted herein is provided as a suggestion or recommendation to you for your internal use. This is not part of the SolarWinds software or documentation that you purchased from SolarWinds, and the information set forth herein may come from third parties. Your organization should internally review and assess to what extent, if any, such custom scripts or recommendations will be incorporated into your environment. You elect to use third-party content at your own risk, and you will be solely responsible for the incorporation of the same if any.