Question

I have to get the System Up time using some sort of techniques. Suggested by someone in StackOverflow I have used Performance Counter to get the System Up time in TimeSpan.

            try
            {
                var uptime = new PerformanceCounter("System", "System Up Time");
                uptime.NextValue();
                return TimeSpan.FromSeconds(uptime.NextValue());
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {

            }

It’s perfectly run on my PC without any problem. But problem occurs in my friend’s computer. On his PC, while running the following line throws exception.

var uptime = new PerformanceCounter("System", "System Up Time");

Exception was "Input String was not in Correct format".

Answer 1

PerformanceCounter can behave differently depending on permissions etc. – for some information regarding this see MSDN.

Another point is that in Windows XP some performance counters are not available if no paging file is configured (for details see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884558/en-us).

Something unrelated:

“Swallowing” exceptions like you do with an empty catch block is BAD practice!