Sql Locks:Average wait time counter ?

Hi There

I am wondering why my performance counter for average wait time is always 0, yesterday we had very bad blocking in the database for hours and this figure was always 0, i have checked sysperfinfo and the wait time counter is always incrementing but the average wait time counter stays 0 permanently ???

If i run performance montitor with these 2 counters i can see wait time going up and down with the "average" block showing values, but the actual average wait time counter stays 0 ???

How can i get accurate Sql Server Locks : average wait time stats ???

Thanx

Hi Satya

Ok i have read the articles and i am familiar with all the information.
My question is why is wait time always 0 on my perfroamnce traces when i know there is alot of wait time happening on the server, it is almost as though the average wait time counter is not working ?

Thanx

Anyone got feedback for me ?

I know this sounds really odd, i have googled it aswell with nothing.
Am i misunderstanding this counter ?

As i said during a period where i know there is alot of blocking happening this counter stays 0, in fact over a period of a week this counter was nothing but 0 ?

As mentioned aswell if i look at sysperfinfo this value is always 0, any reason why this counter would not function ???

Thanx

For example:

select data from sysperfinfo

Object Name Counter_name instance cntr_value cntr_type
SQLServer:Locks Lock Waits/sec _Total 50896 272696320
SQLServer:Locks Lock Wait Time (ms) _Total 171697228 272696320
SQLServer:Locks Average Wait Time (ms) _Total 0 537003008

I wait 1 minute and run it again:

Object Name Counter_name instance cntr_value cntr_type
SQLServer:Locks Lock Waits/sec _Total 50957 272696320
SQLServer:Locks Lock Wait Time (ms) _Total 171769236 272696320
SQLServer:Locks Average Wait Time (ms) _Total 0 537003008

So in this period
there were (50896 - 50957) 61 Locks that had to wait.
there was o total wait time for these 61 locks of (171697228 - 171769236) 72008 ms.

72008/61 = average wait time of 1180ms during that period.

So why is average wait time always 0.

Yes i could write a script that does this, but my entire baseline work is based on set perforamnce traces that run and the data is pulled into a sql table and excel etc.

having to correlate a seperate set of statitics from such a job would make the process harder, and besides that this counetr should work should it not, many resources i ahve read refer to this counter, but in my experience it is always 0, dont know how anyone uses it ?

I have checked all instances of sql server in our environment and it is all the same.

I must be doing or missing something really stupid here???

Please help ?

Thanx