In path C>Windows>debug>WIA there's a text file called 'wiatrace'. It's a log file for whatever. The earliest date in the logging information is Sept. of 2016. This monster is over 5MB of junk as far as I'm concerned. I don't want useless stuff on my computer; this appears useless to me. Windows won't let me delete it. What can anybody tell me about it? Thank you.
Well, from what I can find about it , it seems to be a leftover from a anti-virus. McAfee maybe? Could be from SeaMonkey too it seems. Its from a program you've installed at any rate. 5MB is not all that huge you know but I feel you about getting rid of it. Have you tried deleting it in Safe Mode? Or you could take ownership of it which should let you delete it then. Here's a link to a tutorial on how to do that if you haven't before. We have many excellent tutorials here, written by some VERY talented people, they are worth a look if you need anything done.
Add Take Ownership to Context Menu in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Customization Tutorials
I did some additional research and it COULD be just a log for errors. Part of the system that lets you connect scanners, cameras and such to your machine. As I said earlier 5MB is not all that huge so it might be better if you just left it there as if its a error log it will probably come back.
Hope this helps!
indianacarnie, thanks for your response, but I don't think we're quite on the mark here.
WIA stands for Windows Image Acquisition (not sayin' I know what that's all about), and it's a Windows function of some sort. Don't think it has anything to do with anti-virus or any program I've installed, and I've never used SeaMonkey. When I try to delete the file an error message says it's in use by WIA. Maybe the file shouldn't be deleted, but I can't see why it can't be maintained by the 'system' so old info in the log is deleted so the file doesn't get so big.
Still waiting for an answer. Thanks.
indianacarnie, thanks for your update.
I did say in my OP that it's a log file. It does say something now-and-then about my printer, which also scans. What I'm saying is that it's crazy to maintain a huge log file, which probably has no substantive importance, and not let me delete it. If the system needs it sometime it can create it again, just like the system created it the first time.
Still waiting for somebody to tell me if it's safe to delete and if so, how (hopefully easier than taking ownership).
You can try this ....
Got to Services and stop Windows Image Acquistion (WIA)
Open Command Prompt as Administrator
cd c:\windows\debug\wia
nul > wiatrace.log
Note: that just empties the log ... 0kb
OR
del wiatrace.log
Note: I don't know if it gets recreated or not.
You're right of course. I have no idea what I was looking at when I posted earlier. I apologize profusely. No excuse, was just in a hurry and its very late here. I went looking again and was coming back to amend my earlier post but see you caught it already. Sorry again, I'm usually more careful.
indianacarnie, thanks anyway, don't worry about it.
Thanks, Eagle51 . I'll have to figure out exactly how I want to follow up on your suggestions, but it gives me something to look at.
I'll still welcome any other ideas anybody has.
vanp .... Just checking my desktop pc which has a printer/scanner attached. You can delete the wiatrace.log, but it will get recreated when you use your scanner. I haven't found a way to actually stop it from being created.
Thanks again, Eagle51.
Update: I stopped the service, deleted the file, and re-started the service. Immediately the log file was created with 9KB. Unfortunately, the service won't start automatically when it's needed; that needs to be done manually. It's reasonable to assume nothing bad will happen. I'll mark this issue as closed.
Last edited by vanp; 30 Apr 2017 at 10:23.
wiatrace creates a success log when you scan an image from an attached to your PC document scanner. Nothing to worry about.
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