The PerformanceCounter.Increment, PerformanceCounter.IncrementBy(long), and PerformanceCounter.Decrement methods use interlocks to update the counter value. This helps keep the counter value accurate in multithreaded or multiprocess scenarios, but also results in a performance penalty. If you do not need the accuracy that interlocked operations provide, you can update the PerformanceCounter.RawValue property directly for up to a 5 times performance improvement. However, in multithreaded scenarios, some updates to the counter value might be ignored, resulting in inaccurate data.

If the value for the PerformanceCounter.InstanceLifetime property is PerformanceCounterInstanceLifetime.Process and the performance counter category was created with .NET Framework version 1.0 or 1.1, an InvalidOperationException is thrown. Performance counter categories created with earlier versions use global shared memory, and the value for PerformanceCounter.InstanceLifetime must be PerformanceCounterInstanceLifetime.Global. If the category is not used by applications running on versions 1.0 or 1.1 of the .NET Framework, delete and recreate the category.