Reading the value of a performance counter on Windows with C# .NET

In this post we saw how to list all performance categories and the performance counters within each category. It’s equally straightforward to read the value of a performance counter. You’ll need at least the category and the name of the performance counter. If the counter is available in multiple instances then you’ll need to specify the instance name as well.

The following code will read the CPU usage and memory usage counters:

private static void ReadValuesOfPerformanceCounters()
{
	PerformanceCounter processorTimeCounter = new PerformanceCounter("Processor", "% Processor Time", "_Total");
	PerformanceCounter memoryUsage = new PerformanceCounter("Memory", "Available MBytes");			
	Console.WriteLine("CPU usage counter: ");
	Console.WriteLine("Category: {0}", processorTimeCounter.CategoryName);
	Console.WriteLine("Instance: {0}", processorTimeCounter.InstanceName);
	Console.WriteLine("Counter name: {0}", processorTimeCounter.CounterName);
	Console.WriteLine("Help text: {0}", processorTimeCounter.CounterHelp);
	Console.WriteLine("------------------------------");
	Console.WriteLine("Memory usage counter: ");
	Console.WriteLine("Category: {0}", memoryUsage.CategoryName);
	Console.WriteLine("Counter name: {0}", memoryUsage.CounterName);
	Console.WriteLine("Help text: {0}", memoryUsage.CounterHelp);
	Console.WriteLine("------------------------------");
	while (true)
	{
		Console.WriteLine("CPU value: {0}", processorTimeCounter.NextValue());
		Console.WriteLine("Memory value: {0}", memoryUsage.NextValue());
		Thread.Sleep(2000);
        }
}

Here’s an excerpt of the output:

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