Windows 2000 Performance Monitoring

The following diagram illustrates the performance-monitoring architecture in Windows 2000.

Custom application A uses the registry interface to obtain counter information. Custom application B and the Windows 2000 Performance Monitor use the PDH interface to obtain counter information. In turn, the PDH interface functions can use either the registry interface or WMI. PDH functions obtain performance data provided by WMI through providers that use performance extension DLLs or the high-performance data provider object.

The extension DLLs expose the Open, Collect, and Close functions. For more information, see Creating the Performance Extension DLL.