PROCMON 4.1.0.0 deletes backing files

Bauer Matthias KBL CDYF13 0 Reputation points
2025-03-27T08:55:14.9466667+00:00

I start procmon over powershell. It starts creating output.pml, output-1.pml up to output-22.pml. In the background the file output.pml up to output-5.pml are deleted. I'm not using the ring buffer. If I analyze the backing files entries from the beginning are missing. Why is procmon deleteing the backing files? I have 600GByte of free disk sapce.

Start-Process -FilePath "procmon.exe" -ArgumentList "/Quiet /Minimized /Backingfile output.pml /LoadConfig ProcessMonitorPmcFile.pmc" -Verbose -PassThru
Start-Process -FilePath "procmon.exe" -ArgumentList "/OpenLog output.pml /SaveApplyFilter /SaveAs temp_output.csv" -Wait -Verbose -PassThru
Sysinternals
Sysinternals
Advanced system utilities to manage, troubleshoot, and diagnose Windows and Linux systems and applications.
1,218 questions
0 comments No comments
{count} votes

1 answer

Sort by: Most helpful
  1. Bauer Matthias KBL CDYF13 0 Reputation points
    2025-03-31T13:09:07.3566667+00:00

    with the python script I can enable the ring buffer and set it to 255 minutes which solves my problem. Procmon creates 1 large file (arround 100 GByte) with all captures I'm locking for.

    User's image

    file_name = "ProcessMonitorPmcFile.pmc"
    from procmon_parser import load_configuration, dump_configuration, Rule
    with open(file_name, "rb") as f:
         config = load_configuration(f)
    
    # Print the entire dictionary
    print(config)
    config["Columns"] = [600]  # Example widths in pixels
    config["ColumnCount"] = len(config['Columns'])
    config["ColumnMap"] = [40071]  # Example column types (adjust as needed)
    
    new_rules = [ 
                Rule('EVENT_CLASS', 'is', 'Registry', 'exclude'), 
                Rule('EVENT_CLASS', 'is', 'Network', 'exclude'), 
                Rule('EVENT_CLASS', 'is', 'Process', 'exclude'), 
                Rule('EVENT_CLASS', 'is', 'Profiling', 'exclude'), 
                Rule('PATH', 'BEGINS_WITH', 'D:\\SW\\2025\\mma\\S005_SB\\', 'include'), 
                Rule('OPERATION', 'is', 'CreateFile',  'include')]
    config["FilterRules"] = new_rules
    config["DestructiveFilter"] = 1
    config["FlightRecorder"] = b'\x01\x00\x00\x00'
    config["RingBufferMin"] = b'\xFF\x00\x00\x00'
    print(config)
    
    with open(file_name, "wb") as f:
         dump_configuration(config, f)
    
    
    from procmon_parser import load_configuration, dump_configuration, Rule
    with open(file_name, "rb") as f:
         config = load_configuration(f)
    
    
    print(config["FilterRules"])
    print(config["Columns"])
    print(config["ColumnCount"])
    print(config["ColumnMap"])
    
    
    0 comments No comments

Your answer

Answers can be marked as Accepted Answers by the question author, which helps users to know the answer solved the author's problem.