Solution for: "Process Performance Counter is Disabled..." error on startup

The error shown in PlayerPal

When you start PlayerPal you may see the "An unexpected error has occured" message box.  With the following error text:

Process performance counter is disabled, so the requested operation cannot be performed.  at
System.Diagnostics.NtProcessManager.GetProcessInfos...
etc...

The cause of this error

When PlayerPal starts, it checks for other running PlayerPals.  This check uses a Windows feature to check the list of other running applications.  The error you have above is caused because Windows is unable to do this check.

This can be caused by any of the following reasons:

1. Performance information is not available to a non-admin account, which is not in the Performance Counter Users Group on Windows Server 2003. So the Process class could not get process performance information in this case.
2. Getting performance data from all the processes on the machine is pretty expensive. The operating system (OS) might load lots of DLLs and it might take seconds to complete. The floppy drive light will be on when the OS tries to find the index for some performance counter.
3. If the performance counter data was corrupted for any reason, the Process class could throw an exception while trying to convert some raw performance information into DateTime.
4. The Process class could not be used to get process information on machines without the process performance counter. Performance counters can be disabled in Windows. See the following link for details: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/ reskit/en-us/regentry/94214.asp

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569609.aspx#Question2

How to fix this

1. Make sure you are logged on using an account that is an administrator.
2. If you need to log in as a non-Admin, try adding your account to the Performance Counters User Group.
   
3. If the above did not work your perf counters may be disabled so...
   
4. Enable your performance counters if they are disabled.  Check this doc for information (and edit your registry at your own risk!) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/regentry/94214.mspx?mfr=true
5. If the above did not work, your perf counters may be corrupt so...
6. I'm guessing you could try "repairing" Windows using your Windows install disk (do this at your own risk!)
7. Or, you could try what worked for one of my other customers (but I do not advocate) over here http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread103512.html

Good luck!  And let me know what works for you! (you can leave comments below)