How to programmatically log PerformanceCounter

Question

I understand that using Perfmon.msc you can create a custom performance counter and by using counter log, you can write the counter value to a text file.

I also understand I can also use this programmatically by creating a performance counter by using System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter, and get the counter value using NextValue() method. Is there a programmatical way to tell the PerformanceCounter object to write the log to a text file too (similar to Counter Log in perfmon.msc)?

Answer 1

In .NET you will have to sample the counter yourself and write the sampled value to a file. However, the Win32 API has functions to do what you want. For an example of the native API see Writing Performance Data to a Log File. You could try to use p/invoke to call the API.

Answer 2

Using P/Invoke as suggested by another poster gave too much trouble. I suggest running logman from command line using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()