Network tracing can fail with large Group Policy sets

This article applies to the following operating systems:

  • Windows® 7

Symptoms

On a DirectAccess-provisioned computer, or another group-policy-managed system with a large set of policies, running the netsh trace stop command, the computer may return the error 0x80004005 and fail to compile system information.

Cause

By default, netsh trace stop imposes a 90-second timeout on the data collection phase. On systems which have a very large effective group policy set, typically those provisioned for DirectAccess, collecting the effective policy set may take upwards of 60 seconds and cause the full data collection phase to exceed this timeout.
The results of data collection are gathered before group policy is complete; consequently, the creation of the CAB file fails.

Resolution

If you encounter this issue, include the argument report=yes when calling the netsh trace start command. Now when generating a full report, no timeout is imposed. You can also run the command netsh trace convert <path to ETL file> report=yes to regenerate the CAB file with no timeout.