Sorry about the lack of new posts lately! I was troubleshooting an alert in Operations Manager 2007 from one of the many servers we manage. Research on the Internet did not reveal any resolution to this specific alert although I did find a couple of postings that were somewhat similar and led me down the correct path to resolution. Hopefully this post will help others that are troubleshooting this same alert.
Event ID: 1228
Source: ADAM
Type: Error
Description: System Monitor was unable to open Active Directory performance counters. An attempt to query the following performance counter registry key failed.
Registry key:
SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ADAM\Performance\First Counter
Additional Data
Error value: 2 The system cannot find the file specified.
Sure enough, on my problematic server there was not a First Counter key in the registry at the location listed in the alert. The similar posts that I came across during my research indicated that there might be an .INI file for the performance counters located at C:\WINDOWS\System32. I had already noticed that the registry location above contained a PerfIniFile string value with a value of adamctrs.ini. I checked the System32 directory and found no such file. A search of the C: drive located it at located it at C:\WINDOWS\System32\ADAM.
I opened a command prompt and sourced from the C:\WINDOWS\System32\ADAM directory and ran the following command:
lodctr adamctrs.ini
I then returned to the Registry Editor and, from the menu, selected View > Refresh. Four new DWORD values, as shown above, had been created – First Counter (the one causing my alert), First Help, Last Counter, and Last Help. Alert resolved! Finding the resolution to the problem took longer than the actual correction of the problem. Again, I hope this post will help someone else resolve this error in a timelier manner with less research involved.
Posted by Jim Doyle 
