Getting detailed logs about Windows SideBySide (SxS) events with the SxSTrace utility

Windows has a feature called Side-by-Side Assemblies to help solve issued related to different versions of a DLL with the same filename. These problems are mainly related to native application development (Win32/Win64), but can also occur with .NET and C# applications.

Now, whenever SideBySide (SxS) errors occur, for instance during application startup, Windows collects information about the errors to the Windows Even Log under the Applications log. For instance, the event id 33 reports that there were problems with manifest files, and/or a file could not be found.

These Event Log events are a great start in troubleshooting, but sometimes, you need more information. For these situations, Windows comes with a command-line utility called "sxstrace.exe", which lives by default in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.

This tool can collect detailed logs in the ETL format, and then you can parse such logs to more readable text files using the parse command. Here are two examples:

SxsTrace Trace -logfile:MySxsTraceFile.etl
SxsTrace Parse -logfile:MySxsTraceFile.etl -outfile:MySxsTraceOutput.txt

That said, if you run into trouble with SxS, manifests, missing files or the like, errors can usually be solved with additional information. At that point, sxstrace.exe can prove helpful.

Hope this helps!