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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?

magicandre1981
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Miral
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  • ok, I can repro it now. I first tried an ETL file from a 32Bit Windows 8.1 tablet and this works. today I got an ETL file from a 64Bit Windows 8.1 and I can't open this file, too. I've asked Microsoft and will tell you the result. – magicandre1981 Feb 17 '14 at 20:05
  • Thanks. Yes, all the machines mentioned above were running 64-bit Windows. (It's rare to see anything running 32-bit nowadays.) – Miral Feb 18 '14 at 19:29
  • ok, the error means that the ETL file itself is corrupted and some metadata are missing. look is symbol loading works on the 8.1 system or not. – magicandre1981 Feb 21 '14 at 05:17
  • I wouldn't expect symbol loading to work, as stack tracing wasn't enabled and PDBs were not available. That has never been a problem before. – Miral Feb 21 '14 at 20:49
  • symbol loading has nothing to do with stackwalk. Only load the Microsoft symbols from their public symbol server. – magicandre1981 Feb 22 '14 at 06:33
  • and? does symbol loading works on the 8.1 PC? – magicandre1981 Feb 23 '14 at 07:08
  • ok, I got a different trace and it works under Win7: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2jar5xrcj5rvvbq/WPA_symbol_loading_8_1_x64_ETL_Win7_2.png – magicandre1981 Feb 27 '14 at 20:54

2 Answers2

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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

magicandre1981
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  • I'm running the version from the Windows 8.1 ADK; I don't remember that coming in 32-bit vs. 64-bit flavours. And I'm just running xperf from a `.cmd` file, which ought to run the 64-bit version if it's there. – Miral Mar 19 '14 at 20:17
  • remove the ADK and use the Windows 8.1 SDK to install the WPT. – magicandre1981 Mar 20 '14 at 05:04
  • But I have the same ADK version on my Windows 7 PC that is unable to read the trace. – Miral Mar 20 '14 at 11:21
  • please try the updated WPT/ADK (for 8.1 Spring Update): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/hardware/gg454513 – magicandre1981 Apr 03 '14 at 08:57
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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.

Bruce Dawson
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