Counter Control

Specifically designed for Intel processors, Counter Control provides a lightweight software tool ready to help you monitor the fixed performance counters. These performance counters are a shared resource of Intel CPUs, meaning that programs running concurrently on a computer might be trying to use the same counters at the same time.

Counter Control monitors usage attempts for the performance counters and lets you know about their status. In other words, if the Intel counters are used by any software, this tiny application reveals the new status of the counters, providing you with options to log this data.

There are four different values that Counter Control can show: if the fixed function counters are not presently being used, it reveals code 0x000; if the counters are programmed to mode 2, that probably means that Windows Defender is using the counters and Counter Control displays the information accordingly. When two counters are programmed to mode 3, while the third is not used, the Counter Control is set to “Normal - 0x330”. Lastly, when two counters are being used normally, while the third is set to mode 2 (used by Windows Defender), the application shows code “Warning - 0x332”, as a sign that two different software solutions might have been fighting to take control over the counters.

There is also an option to reset the counters and you can read more about it in the application’s documentation.