Welcome back. After our series of posts on Windows Server 2008, today we're going to switch gears a little bit and look at WMI Logging. We often get calls from customers regarding WMI issues beyond the Permissions or Impersonation Rights problems that we've discussed in previous posts. In many of these cases, the WMI provider may be hanging or is consuming an inordinate amount of resources. The problem is trying to identify what exactly is going on when the issue surfaces. One way to do this is by enabling some debug logging for WMI.

For Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, the log files created by WMI and various providers record events, trace or diagnostic data, errors and other activities. Only a user with administrative privileges could access the WMI Logs folder. On Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0, non-administrators could read the logs in the WMI log folder. Enabling logging on Windows XP / Windows Server 2003, is a fairly simple process that does not require any service restarts (unless you change the log file location). To enable logging, open the Computer Management MMC snap-in, expand the Services and Applications section and select WMI Control