The performance counters brings some powerful insight to your windows servers. To quote this blog http://windowsitpro.com/systems-management/monitor-windows-server-performance-counters
"When you want your servers to perform at their best, Windows Server's built-in performance monitoring and analysis tools offer insight into potential areas for improvement by letting you monitor current performance information and log this information over time."
Spot on, but sometimes you don't really need them and this may especially apply to development environments where logging errors from not configured services may bloat the logging a bit.
Disabling
To enable/disable stuff I often use PowerShell, here is how you disable your Performance Counters using PowerShell.
## # Disable performance counters to prevent extensive logging in SharePoint # http://technet.microsoft.com/sv-se/library/cc737243(v=ws.10).aspx # Eric Herlitz, www.herlitz.nu ## function TrySetProperty($launcherSettings, $propertyName) { if(Test-Path $launcherSettings) { $key = Get-Item -LiteralPath $launcherSettings if($key.GetValue($propertyName, $null)){ Write-Host "Property already exist, skipping" -ForegroundColor Green } else { Write-Host "Property not set, inserting" -ForegroundColor Yellow Try { New-ItemProperty $launcherSettings -Name $propertyName -Value "1" -PropertyType dword Write-Host "Sucessfully inserted $propertyName" -ForegroundColor Green Write-Host "To make changes to this entry effective, restart Windows." -ForegroundColor Green } Catch { Write-Host "Failed to inserted $propertyName" -ForegroundColor Red } } } } TrySetProperty "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Perflib" "Disable Performance Counters"
Restart your computer after running the script