We are having problems getting performance counter collection to work when File & Printer Sharing is turned off on a computer which collects the counters from itself locally, and I would like to get clarification on why the behavior we are seeing is not a bug. We used the typeperf.c example code found in the Microsoft Platform SDK August 2001 edition. For simplication during testing, we attempted to collect the counters on the same computer where TypePerf was invoked. Windows 2003 was the OS used. We discovered the following when File & Printer sharing is turned off. - Invoking TypePerf against 127.0.0.1 or against the NetBIOS machine name (Not the FQDN) works. So for example these work: TypePerf.exe "\\127.0.0.1\Memory\Available MBytes" TypePerf.exe "\\machinename\Memory\Available MBytes" - Invoking TypePerf against either the machine's IP, or against the machine's FQDN, fails. Specifically the PdhCollectQueryData call returns 0x800007D5 (no data) for the failure cases: TypePerf.exe "\\192.168.5.10\Memory\Available MBytes" TypePerf.exe "\\machinename.my.domain.com\Memory\Available Bytes" Note that NetBIOS over TCP is turned off on the interface adapter. When we turn on File & Printer Sharing, all of the above work correctly. Can someone explain why the cases that work above work, and why the ones that fail above fail? Our product is a performance and load testing tool, so the ability to collect counters on systems under test is critical. I suspect that the local name resolution code for Microsoft Networking is somewhat convoluted and is for some reason rejecting use of DNS for a FQDN in a case where it should not be making that restriction. That behavior looks like a bug to us. Separate question: Is counter collection all being implemented over RPC? In an ideal world we would like to find a way to collect counters on remote computers without a requirement to turn on File & Printer sharing (which invokes a whole set of security issues and requires additional administration on the target computer). If there are some straightforward ways to get remote counters without turning File & Printer Sharing I would appreciate knowing what those are. -- Will
