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Accepted
bzamfir
Asked: 2012-03-12 06:36:35 +0800 CST

Totally removing Windows Event Logs

  • 772

I am developing an application that creates Windows event logs and writes to them.

However, during development and testing, I created some event logs by mistake, with sources registered to them.

The issue is that only the first 8 characters of the event log name are significant. Now that I have logs with incorrect names, I cannot create the new logs that I need.

Is there any way to totally remove these event logs (and not just clear them)?

I have tried to delete the file C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs\WrongNamedEventLog.evtx, but with no success.

windows windows-event-log

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Do it programmatically, like this (C#):

    System.Diagnostics.EventLog.Delete("WrongNamedEventLog");

    You don't have to compile a C# application to do it though, just invoke the Delete(string logname) method from PowerShell if you like:

    [System.Diagnostics.EventLog]::Delete("WrongNamedEventLog");
    • 9

  2. I haven't tested this, but if I was in your case...
    Use regedit to browse this path, and delete your custom bogus logs:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\LogToDelete
    Reboot
    Then delete the corresponding files from:
    C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs
    and/or
    C:\windows\system32\config

    • 1