The _Total Instance

Performance Monitor for Windows NT 4.0 has a new instance, _Total, for counters in the Process, Thread, Paging File, Physical Disk, and Logical Disk objects. _Total is the sum of counter values for all instances of the object. The _Total counters are useful for screening and are easier to read than a chart of all instances.

However, the _Total instance doesn't make sense for some counters. For example, the total of Process ID or Thread ID, has no meaning. In these cases, Performance Monitor displays a zero for the _Total instance.

You can change the name of the _Total instance by editing the configuration registry entry, TotalInstanceName.

Subtree

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE

Key

\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Perflib

Name

TotalInstanceName

Type

REG_SZ

Values

InstanceName (_Total is the default.)