Trace64 finally here to stay – But it is hidden

Trace64 is very useful to parse MDT and ConfigMgr log files… And until ConfigMgr 2012 Beta was released the core 64-bit version of Trace32 has only been available internally at Microsoft (officially).

Update! In ConfigMgr 2012 RC1 Trace64 was renamed to CMTrace and is now available as a native x86 and x64 version. CMTrace is also automatically added to the ConfigMgr 2012 boot images. I left the article here for references and for learning techniques about finding solutions.

Trace64 is very useful to parse MDT and ConfigMgr log files… And until ConfigMgr 2012 Beta was released the core 64-bit version of Trace32 has only been available internally at Microsoft (officially).

Trace64.exe was available in build 7245 ConfigMgr 2012 but in later releases, like Beta 2 (Build 7561), it was removed… Or so I thought… 🙂

Microsoft indeed did release Trace64 even in ConfigMgr 2012 Beta 2, but where is it? If you search you only find trace32.exe… Well it's hidden in the Trace32.exe and is extracted when you start Trace32.exe on a x64 machine. What's the problem with that? Well, you can't start it from a x64 WinPE which is missing WOW64.

The solution, get a copy of the extracted x64 binary. This is the trace32.exe process viewed in Process Explorer. Note the TRA184B.tmp file (may be named different on your system)



Here are the properties of the TRA184B.tmp file:

Get a copy of the TRA184B.tmp file, rename it to Trace64.exe and add it to your WinPE Image, and voila, it works in x64 WinPE.

/ Johan