Fix for Server Manager Error: "Online - Cannot get performance counter data"

One of the interesting things about having a home lab is you get to break things in ways that no one thought possible. I'll give a nickle to the next person who has this happen to them.

I have three Exchange servers running Windows Server 2012 R2. Performance counters have been started on all three servers (see https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831394.aspx). One server had two IP addresses configured for one NIC so I could do some testing. When I removed the second IP address from the single NIC and restarted the server Server Manager complained that it could not refresh that server.

When I clicked Manageability in Server Manager it showed "Online - Cannot get performance counter data." Re-adding the secondary IP and restarting the server doesn't help.

Lots of troubleshooting later (involving Perfmon, Bing-fu, and swearing) I discovered the following fix:

1. Open an elevated CMD prompt to C:\Windows
2. Run lodctr /R to rebuild the perf registry strings and info from scratch based on the current registry settings and backup INI files. If this works, you're done. In my case, it resulted with the error, "Error: Unable to rebuild performance counter setting from system backup store, error code is 2." Very helpful. :-|
3. Change to the C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder and run lodctr /R again. This time I got "Info: Successfully rebuilt performance counter setting from system backup store"
4. Run winmgmt /resyncperf to register the system performance libraries with WMI and then refresh Server Manager to see that the problem is resolved.

One of the reasons I run this blog is to maintain a memory of esoteric things like this. I doubt I'll ever see it again.