Network Management

Reset corrupted Windows performance counters to troubleshoot NTA

This article describes how to reset corrupt performance counters. Corrupt performance counters prevent precise troubleshooting of SolarWinds NetFlow Service or NTA Flow Storage Service

First published date

10/23/2018 6:34 PM

Last published date

9/11/2025 1:10 AM

Overview

Corrupted performance counters prevent precise troubleshooting of SolarWinds NetFlow Service or NTA Flow Storage Service.

Product section

Netflow Traffic Analyzer

Cause

Performance counters have been corrupted (initialized as read-only).

To verify the cause of the issue:

Check NTA.BusinessLayer.log or FastBitServerService.log, and if there is the following error message, your service crashes because of corrupted counters.

ERROR SolarWinds.Orion.NetFlow.Service.Program - NetFlowService will be abnormally terminated - Unhandled exception. System.InvalidOperationException: The requested Performance Counter is not a custom counter, it has to be initialized as ReadOnly. at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter.InitializeImpl() at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter..ctor(String categoryName, String counterName, String instanceName, Boolean readOnly) at System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter..ctor(String categoryName, String counterName, Boolean readOnly) at FastbitCLR.PerfCounterSampling.Initialize() at SolarWinds.Netflow.FastBit.Server.Core.FastBitEmbeddedConnection.StartSamplingPerformanceCounters() at SolarWinds.Netflow.FastBit.Server.Api.NTAFastBitServerPlugin.InitializeFastBitDatabase() at SolarWinds.Netflow.FastBit.Server.Api.NTAFastBitServerPlugin.Start() at SolarWinds.Netflow.Processing.AppContext.b__a() at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state, Boolean ignoreSyncCtx) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

Open Windows Performance Monitor (for example by entering perfmon into the Command Prompt) and navigate to Performance Monitor. In case of performance counters, an error message is displayed, such as: "MMC cannot initialize the snap-in performance monitor".

Resolution

To reset performance counters and resolve the issue, follow the steps below:

Open the Command Prompt using an account with administrator rights.
Change the directory according to your operating system:

For 32-bit operating systems, type:
```
 c:\windows\system32 
```
For 64-bit operating systems, type:
```
cd c:\windows\sysWOW64
```

Run lodctr /r.
Restart the appropriate service (SolarWinds NetFlow or NTA Flow Storage service).

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