VMware Authorization Service High CPU Usage

When running VMware Workstation on Microsoft Windows, the VMware Authorization Service (vmware-authd.exe) may place a high CPU load on the system.  Upgrading from Workstation 14 to the latest Workstation 15 had no impact, so it's not something that VMware recently fixed.  I remember the issue from many years ago, but not how to resolve the situation.

I'm documenting here so that I don't forget the solution. It's my remind-future-self post.

While I found plenty of Google hits with a similar complaint, I hadn't found any solutions that worked for me.

The vCommunity is great, so a quick tweet was met with a quick reply from buddy Bob Plankers:

https://t.co/q62OpGpke1

— Bob Plankers (@plankers) November 30, 2018

Bob's reply sent me to an article on michlG's blog.   The proposed solution did not fit my particular circumstances, but it got me on the right track: looking at Windows performance counters.  

When running PerfMon (I suppose that I should do so more often) I received an error:

My next stop was a Technet article which did the trick:

1. lodctr /r
2. lodctr /q to find anything disabled.
3. lodctr /e:"performance counter" to enable