Counter is single instance, instance name 'WebDev.WebServer40' is not valid for this counter category

Question

I'm trying to use a Memory Performance Counter:

System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter theMemCounter = 
    new System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter("Memory", "Available MBytes",
    System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName, true);

var memStart = theMemCounter.NextValue();

But in the second line i'm getting the following error:

Counter is single instance, instance name 'WebDev.WebServer40' is not valid for this counter category.

What is the problem?

if you open perfmon do you see that counter within the Memory category? — Chris, Apr 17 '12 at 12:37
Are you talking about the attribute CategoryName? If yes, here is it: `CategoryName = "Memory"`. — Vinicius Ottoni, Apr 17 '12 at 13:05

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 17 '12 at 17:51

Ottoni, I don't think you can specify a process to this particular Performance Counter, since it monitors the available memory on the whole system.

Maybe the perfcounter you're looking for is ".NET CLR Memory(INSTANCE)# Bytes in all Heaps" or some other in the .NET CLR Memory category, which is able to monitor memory usage for all or a specified .net application.

More info on this category here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/x2tyfybc.aspx

--EDIT

Solution:

System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter theMemCounter =
    new System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter("Process", "Working Set",
    System.Diagnostics.Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessName);

var memStart = theMemCounter.NextValue() / 1024 / 1024;

this post can be useful too: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3411805/how-to-use-net-performancecounter-to-track-memory-and-cpu-usage-per-process — Amirton Chagas, Apr 17 '12 at 13:52

Counter is single instance, instance name 'WebDev.WebServer40' is not valid for this counter category

1 Answers1