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Performance monitors: "Bad input parameter"

I'm creating some disk monitor templates and am getting some errors. For example:

Category: Logical Disk

Counter: % Disk Time

Instance: Tried blank, _total, C:, C...

The counters were originally chosen with the Browse for Components tool and it created the monitors with Instance blank. I've logged onto the server in question and can gather those stats in perfmon just fine for the specific drives and _total locally.

The error is: "Component Status Details: Bad input parameter. The supplied Category is invalid."

Credentials are good, connectivity is good, and I'm collecting other performance data from the servers being used as the test. Things like Pool Nonpaged Bytes, Work Item Shortages, % Processor Time, etc.

Using APM 3.5.

Any ideas?

Edit: The Disk Queue Length monitor that was working previously has also stopped working with the same error at about the same time the others were added.

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MikeAsthalter

Hi lhorstma,

Are you using the Find Processes, Services, and Performance Counters command to set up your new template with the performance counters you want?

See the section "Creating New Templates" and its subsection "To create a new template using the browsing method" in the APM Administrator Guide, p. 19 for more information. You can find the Admin Guide here:

http://www.solarwinds.com/support/apm/docs/APMAdministratorGuide.pdf

On my system, for the LogicalDisk counter % Disk Time, it is showing the available instances as C: and _Total.

Hope this helps,

Mike

lhorstma

Mike, yes, it was using the "Find Processes, Services, and Performance Counters". The issue had spread to a whole host of other monitors over night. Over half of my performance counters had stopped working with the same "Bad input parameter" error, so I figured it had to be something with the Orion server itself. I found a hotfix that wasn't installed covering the performance counter polling and installed that, then rebooted, and everything is currently up and running fine. I'll monitor it and add some more monitors and post back here if the issue comes back.

macnugetz

Glad to hear the hotfixes solved your issue. The invalid category error is related to known issues with WMI, which is something we're looking at addressing long term in APM.

-Craig

rjg5050

What version of APM was this on and what was the hotfix you applied?