Cannot start Concurrency Visualizer in Visual Studio 2012. Got error "Unable to start the ETW collection"

Question

When I tried to profile a WPF application with Concurrency Visualzer (tried both launch and attach to process), I got the following error pop up - "Unable to start the ETW collection"

ETW clearly means "Event Tracing for Windows", but I don't understand why VS cannot start it during profiling session. Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

For anyone else running into this without access to tracelog.exe (which does not appear to be included in WDK 10).

List all Data Collector Sets:

logman -ets

For me the perpetrator was NT Kernel Logger which was stopped by

logman stop "NT Kernel Logger" -ets

Answer 2

I had the same problem with the Concurrency Visualizer extension in VS2015.

I downloaded the Concurrency Visualizer Command Line Utility and invoked CVCollectionCmd /Query (from an elevated prompt) but it would always say the following : Collection cannot start because the required ETW sessions are already in use.

I got this error even after a reboot.

The solution

I ran tracelog -x (from an elevated prompt) and I stopped every running ETW session. After that CVCollectionCmd /Query said Not collecting, ready to start. and I was able to start the analysis from Visual Studio.

I couldn't determine which process or service on my computer started those ETW sessions.