As a performance tester, I’m used to collecting stats about Windows systems perrformance. I’ve done this using Windows PERFMON as well as using performance test tools such as LoadRunner and Facilita Forecast to gather performance related statistics from systems undergoing tests.
I recently did some performance testing for a client using Visual Studio and was gathering stats for later analysis. I used the Windows Performance Monitor snap-in to create my data collector sets as shown below.
By following the default options I found that my PERFMON counters were only gathered for one minute before stopping. I continually restarted my new data collector sets only to see them stop “as soon as my back was turned”. I check the account permissions for the running service, local security policies and event viewer logs but couldn’t find the problem.
When I was at the stage of tearing out my (rapidly thinning) hair, I came across this setting….
By default, all windows performance counter data collector sets stop after 1 minute.
To alter this behaviour, “Right-click” on the properties for the new Data Collector Set.
Select the “Stop Condition” tab and uncheck the “Overall duration” checkbox.
By default this is set to 1 minute as shown below.
