Dan Taylor shows how to disable SQL Server performance counters using a registry setting:
About 6 or 7 years ago, I had an issue where my SQL Server performance counters were not available when looking within performance monitor. I went thru the steps of unloading and reloading the counters according to Microsoft documentation and by looking at many of the blog posts out there. The performance counters still would not show.
My next step was to dig into the registry and look at the performance counters entry for SQL Server.
I’d have to imagine that the number of good use cases for disabling performance counters is low, but it’s occasionally necessary for troubleshooting.