6

On two separate Windows 8.1 installations with Visual Studio 2013 installed, the event log service errors on any attempt to read from/write to it.

When I open Event Viewer I get this message when viewing any log:

Event Viewer cannot open the event log or custom view. Verify that Event Log service is running or query is too long. The request is not supported (50)

The Windows Event Log service is running.

If I try to write to the event log programmatically, I get a Win32Exception with NativeErrorCode 50/HResult -2147467259 "The request is not supported".

If I navigate to C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs, I can open the .evtx files using the local Event Viewer and they appear fine (except for having no events since mid-May 2014).

Any ideas how to repair this?

Improve this question
3
  • Did you manage to find a solution? I'm experiencing the same issue with Windows 10.
    – beppe9000
    Sep 10, 2016 at 23:39
  • Nope. Ended up reinstalling.
    – dmo
    Sep 15, 2016 at 4:31
  • 3
    This happened to me after adding the registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT" to enable the "ReFS" file system on Windows 8.1. This also lead to the installation of Windows Updates no longer working (error message "Windows PE is not supported"). To fix this I simply had to delete the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT" registry key (see quppa.net/blog/2016/04/14/beware-of-the-minint-registry-key). Hope this helps.
    – Olaf Hess
    Jun 26, 2017 at 9:07

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Really old question, but I believe the answer still applies under Windows 10. The credit for this answer goes to the comment made by Olaf Hess above, but it's absolutely correct:

Remove the registry key called HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MiniNT.

Apparently the presence of this key causes all kinds of issues for the Event Log viewer, as well as Windows Update, and possibly other things, because it makes the system believe that you're running the Windows Preinstallation Environment. See this blog post: https://www.quppa.net/blog/2016/04/14/beware-of-the-minint-registry-key/

Improve this answer
2
  • Win10- I had added that key to enable ReFS and forgot to remove it. It caused so many issues including Outlook and Teams to not be able to communicate and our patch management agent to run non-stop CPU trying to write to the event viewer which was not working. Thank you so much for this post.
    – naps1saps
    Jun 7, 2022 at 19:48
  • Win10, ThinkPad L15 - exactly the same problem: ReFS enabled and forgot to remove. Fingerprint sensor stopped working, YubiKey stopped working, Lenovo Vantage failed to start, and couldn't be installed anymore. EventViewer didn't work. Finally, I came across this posting -- for me personally, the most relevant I have ever encountered on SO. I'm really grateful!
    – mstrap
    Nov 9, 2023 at 14:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .