The PerformanceCounter.CategoryName is displayed in the Performance Object field of Performance Counter Manager MMC snap in's Add Counter dialog box.

A performance counter monitors the behavior of a category, or performance object, on a computer. Categories include physical components (such as processors, disks, and memory) and system objects (such as processes and threads). System counters that are related to the same performance object are grouped into a category that indicates their common focus. When you create an instance of the System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter class, you first indicate the category with which the component will interact, and then you choose a counter from that category.

For example, one Windows counter category is the Memory category. System counters within this category track memory data such as the number of bytes available and the number of bytes cached. If you wanted to work with the bytes cached in your application, you would create an instance of the System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter component, connect it to the Memory category, and then pick the appropriate counter (in this case, Cached Bytes) from that category.

Although your system makes many more counter categories available, the categories that you will probably interact with most frequently are the Cache, Memory, Objects, PhysicalDisk, Process, Processor, Server, System, and Thread categories.