Weekly Tip 70

Redirect Event Logs

There could be many reasons why you need to redirect event logs to another location. For this example, I’m going to redirect them to C:\EventLogs. They are, by default located at C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs.

First, you need the directory in place (not a mandatory requirement, but I like things clean). You can create the directory by hand, with PowerShell, or anything else. I prefer PowerShell. Here’s the commands that I used, which builds the directory, hides it, and sets it as a system directory:

$dir = new-item -type directory C:\EventLogs

$dir.attributes=”Hidden,System”

Next, to prevent users from modifying the directory, we need to set some ACLs. I just grab the ACLs from the current directory (C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs) and set it on the new directory. The second line disables inheritance in the ACL, which is important so that the directory doesn’t get rules from C:.

$acl = get-acl “C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs”

$acl.SetAccessRuleProtection($true,$true)

set-acl “C:\EventLogs” $acl

Finally, we need to create a GPO to move the log locations. The policies you are looking for are at Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Event Log Service. There are four folders here, one for each log. You need to enable the “Control the location of the log file” setting in each folder and set it to your new location.

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