Friday, February 11, 2005

Could not See Virtual Server 2005 Events

Playing around with Virtual Server 2003 eval edition, I had problems starting one of my guest OS'es. I went into eventvwr to analyze the problem and discovered that Virtual Server creates its own eventlog like e.g. DNS does. This was empty. The events were in the Application log but they were not translated correctly -
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Virtual Server
Event Category: (2)
Event ID: 1061
Date: 12-02-2005
Time: 11:32:54
User: HOST\Administrator
Computer: HOST
Description: The description for Event ID ( 1061 ) in Source ( Virtual Server ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: po-sql2000.

Not very useful! So I decided to fix the registry to get these events translated correctly. This is how I did that -
  • First I looked below HKLM\SYSTEM\CCS\Services\Eventlog\Virtual Server\Virtual Server
  • Here I found the pointer for the resource DLL C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Server Trial\Event Log\VirtualServerLogMessages.dll.
  • I verified that the file was on my system.
  • Having done so, I exported the above key to a .REG file.
  • Replaced the first \Virtual Server\ string with \Application\ using notepad.
  • Saved the file.
  • Loaded it by double-clicking it

This got the messages translated corrected in event viewer -

"po-sql2000" could not be started because there is not enough physical memory or system resources available.

Now I only have to figure out what it means by that - I have 1.5 GB available!

1 comment:

mfarney said...

VS2005 has made a lot of problems to a lot of people. One must be an expert in order to handle all the errors that appear. The 2003 edition, though, was a bit cleaner and better error wise. Perhaps this is only my experience and others found 2003 to be as "evil" as 2005. Still, I'm glad I found a solution for the DLL problems. For a few minutes I thought it was hopeless to even try.