It has gotten much better since then. These days the preferred logging API is the Tracelogging API https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn7

It has gotten much better since then. These days the preferred logging API is the Tracelogging API https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn701953(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn... . No schemas, no XML, no build integration required, no decoding problems. As for collecting logs, WPR is currently the best tool. There's a great .NET library for both logging and reading recorded events. http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Diagnostics.Tracing.TraceEvent http://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Diagnostics.Tracing....