Bad data returned to SQL Server Monitor from agent

Created by Unknown User (adimopoulos), last modified by Sam Sulu on Mar 17, 2014

The SQL Server monitor may return the following error message when it is unable to gather SQL server performance data from the Windows agent:

Error: bad data returned from agent

Common causes of this problem include:

An instance used in the service monitor does not exist or no instance value is required.
The Windows agent is unable to access the SQL server performance counters on the agent.
The Windows agent is out of date and needs to be updated to the latest version to match the SQL Server monitor functionality.