Not able to extract performance data from .ETL file using xperf commands. getting error "Events were lost in this trace. Data may be unreliable ..."

Not able to extract performance data from .ETL file using xperf commands.

Xperf Commands:

xperf –i C:\TempFolder\Test.etl -o C:\TempFolder\BootData.csv  –a process

Getting following error after executing above command:

"33288636 Events were lost  in this trace.  Data may be unreliable.
 This is usually caused  by insufficient disk bandwidth for ETW logging.
 Please try increasing the minimum and maximum number of buffers and/or
 the buffer size.  Doubling these values would be a good first attempt.
 Please note, though, that this action increases the amount of memory
 reserved for ETW buffers, increasing memory pressure on your scenario.
 See "xperf -help start" for the associated command line options."

I changed page size file but its does not work for me.

I am using windows performance recorder(WPRUI.exe) to collect performance log(.ETL file).

Any one have idea, how to solve this problem and extract ETL file data.

ur22

Posted 2014-11-11T17:03:41.947

Reputation: 11

Answers

You can't workaround this. xperf stops when lost events were detected. ETW writes data into a RAM buffer and asynchronous to the HDD but the disk was not able to write all data into the ETL file before the buffer was overridden with new ETW data.

View the data in WPA, it ignores lost events.

magicandre1981

Posted 2014-11-11T17:03:41.947

Reputation: 86 560

Thank you for your inputs. I want to extract data from ETL file to generate report in excel format. Is there any other alternative to extract data from ETL files? – ur22 – 2014-11-12T15:22:32.543

code your own tool to parse the ETL. If you use .Net you can use this library: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Diagnostics.Tracing.TraceEvent

– magicandre1981 – 2014-11-12T16:31:41.123

Thank you for your inputs. let me try with above link. Thank you again. – ur22 – 2014-11-12T16:59:38.890

I want to mention, I am working on more machines to capture performance data. this xperf commands is not working only on SSD drive machine. Is there any issues with windows performance toolkit(WPR) and xperf with SSD drive? – ur22 – 2014-11-12T17:17:58.673

SSDs are better, they write data faster to the ETL. Normally this reduces the chance to see this error. Btw, PerfView can also open ETL files and show summaries which can be opened view Excel: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=28567

– magicandre1981 – 2014-11-13T05:03:11.957

Thank you your help. Issue is resolved after disabling superfetch service of SSD drive machine. But now I am facing one issue, using wprui.exe I am capturing boot data for 3 iterations. total boot time of 1st and 3rd iteration always high means 1st= 47S 2nd=32S 3rd= 47S. I am new to performance tools, I opened ETL file using WPA and went to boot phase data, there I seen winlogon init phase taking more time for 1st and 3rd iteration. can you help to find exact root cause of boot issue. – ur22 – 2014-11-14T22:09:01.093

zip the 2nd and 3rd file, upload it to a cloud service – magicandre1981 – 2014-11-15T06:44:27.453

@ur22 have you found the cause? – magicandre1981 – 2014-11-25T05:03:09.830

ok, there is an option -tle which ignores lost events. I discovered this yesterday. Try it – magicandre1981 – 2014-11-29T08:23:53.117

To get xperf.exe to ignore the lost events, you can use the -tle option:

xperf –i C:\TempFolder\Test.etl -o C:\TempFolder\BootData.csv –a process -tle

NicJ

Posted 2014-11-11T17:03:41.947

Reputation: 161