Error viewing xperf ETL file on another machine

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I have a machine with Windows 8.1 and the ADK (xperf 6.3.9600) installed.

I have another machine with Windows 7 SP1 and the 8.1 ADK (xperf 6.3.9600) installed.

If I use xperf to generate a trace on the 8.1 machine, I cannot load that trace on the Win7 machine; it gives me the error The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. (0x80070570).

The ETL file can successfully be loaded on the machine that generated it and on another machine that is also running Windows 8.1.

Is it only possible to load trace files on an equal or higher OS than the one that generated them? Why doesn't it just require the same xperf/WPA version? Or does this work for other people and there's something I've overlooked?

performance
windows-8
xperf
windows-performance-analyzer
asked on Stack Overflow Feb 4, 2014 by Miral • edited Dec 28, 2017 by magicandre1981

2 Answers

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The error message means the trace is corrupted (ERROR_METADATA_MISSING). Microsoft told me it can happen when you use a 32Bit WPT instead of a 64Bit WPT on a 64Bit Windows.

A normal ETL trace opens fine under Windows 7:

enter image description here

answered on Stack Overflow Mar 18, 2014 by magicandre1981
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I routinely load traces from other machines and analyze them. I am running Windows 7 SP1 64-bit and I can analyze traces from Windows 8.1, and any other post-XP version of Windows.

You are probably not recording the traces correctly -- perhaps you are missing the merge step? I recommend using UIforETW, as discussed here:

https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/xperf-basics-recording-a-trace-the-ultimate-easy-way/

If it doesn't work then it's a bug, but it should work.

I assume that you are running 64-bit Windows. Some traces take a lot of memory to load so I recommend that you be using a 64-bit OS.

It could also happen if you compress the trace when recording it on Windows 8+, because Windows 7 doesn't support loading compressed ETW traces. However that's not something you would do accidentally -- you need to add the -compress option when doing "xperf -merge". However, if you switch to using UIforETW then you do have to be aware of this. UIforETW defaults to compressing traces and this has to be disabled if you want to view them on Windows 7.

answered on Stack Overflow Mar 18, 2014 by Bruce Dawson • edited Sep 28, 2015 by Bruce Dawson

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