Displaying a Trace Log

You can use TraceView to display the contents of any event trace log (.etl) file (also known as a trace log), including event trace log files that were not generated by using TraceView.

All that you need to display a trace log is formatting information, which you can provide to TraceView by locating a PDB symbol file (.pdb), a trace message format (.tmf) file, or the path to the TMF files for the trace messages.

While viewing the trace log, you can group and ungroup trace logs, generate new trace log files, and copy the trace messages for displaying in other formats.

This section includes:

Displaying a trace log with a PDB File

Displaying a trace log with a TMF file

Setting Trace Log Options

Comments

TraceView requires a PDB file, a TMF file, or a TMF directory to display the contents of a trace log. TraceView does not use the %TRACE_FORMAT_SEARCH_PATH% environment variable.

The trace session name is not saved in the event trace log (.etl) file or in the TraceView output file or summary file. When you use TraceView to display a trace log, it uses the default session name, LogSessionN, as the name of the trace session (where N is a zero-based integer that represents the order in which the session is created).