FYI, there was a fix applied for this issue that uses a fallback mechanism for calculating process cpu load in the event that something causes querying of the performance counters to fail. It will be in the nightly tomorrow and is targeted for 8.1.20 release.
I didnāt have luck with anything from the VMware article unfortunately, but 8.1.20 RC1 did work! Thanks for all the investigative work on the matter.
For planning purposes, Iām guessing 8.1.20 is scheduled to be released around the end of the month?
If all goes according to plan, yes.
Just circling back on this, I learned something about my environment that might be to blame. Itās running Windows Server 2019, managed by my client. Turns out their IT never installed a single Windows update - itās as fresh (and buggy) as it was release day 2018! 
Regardless, the fallback in 8.1.20 still works so thatās one problem solved!