Is a Windows performance counter affecting performance?

Question

AFAIK, the working paradigm of the Windows performance counter is as follows:

When various programs are launched on Windows, performance data is written to the appropriate counters by the Windows operating system, i.e. performance counters are similar to performance data receivers . Then we could use Performance Monitor (perfmon.exe) to view the data in these counters.

If the above understanding is correct, I wonder if these data records will affect performance?

And can we read data from the performance counter of a remote computer?

Answer 1

I believe the answer is:

• Yes, potentially reading performance counters can themselves affect performance, however, exactly what affects it depends entirely on the implementation of the performance counter. Usually, performance meters are designed to have a negative impact on performance, so you should be safe.

• Yes, you can read the performance counters of remote computers - just provide the name of the remote machine when adding the performance counter to perfmon: