How to resolve an error "It has taken too long to refresh the W3SVC counters, the stale counters are being used instead"

Question

I am seeing event ID 2001 with error message:

It has taken too long to refresh the W3SVC counters , the stale counters are being used instead.

The event source: IIS-W3SVC-PerfCounters.

This happens on a Windows Server 2008 R2 and on this server we have no Perf Counters enabled, but still i am seeing these errors. I am afraid that this might effect IIS. Can anyone please help me in this? Appreciate your help in Advance!

Answer 1

This isn't quite due to 100% CPU utilization, it is actually due to the W3SVC being too busy with requests to deal with performance counters - it can be related to CPU or memory constraints. This prevents performance counter work from taking up the W3SVC's time when it is busy.

When things quieten down, performance counters will be collected and everything will be resolved automatically for you.

If you got this error a lot, it would be worth investigating further (i.e. can your server handle the load it has).

As per the official documentation:

The event log message is informational regarding performance counter status. The issue will be corrected by the system; you do not have to take any action.

Answer 2

This usually happens under 100% CPU load. You can safely ignore this message as your system works as expected (response time and etc.).

I found no way to suppress this messages.