ClearEventLogW function (winbase.h)

Article
02/09/2023

Clears the specified event log, and optionally saves the current copy of the log to a backup file.

Syntax

BOOL ClearEventLogW(
  [in] HANDLE  hEventLog,
  [in] LPCWSTR lpBackupFileName
);

Parameters

[in] hEventLog

A handle to the event log to be cleared. The OpenEventLog function returns this handle.

[in] lpBackupFileName

The absolute or relative path of the backup file. If this file already exists, the function fails.

If the lpBackupFileName parameter is NULL, the event log is not backed up.

Return value

If the function succeeds, the return value is nonzero.

If the function fails, the return value is zero. To get extended error information, call GetLastError. The ClearEventLog function can fail if the event log is empty or the backup file already exists.

Remarks

After this function returns, any handles that reference the cleared event log cannot be used to read the log.

Note

The winbase.h header defines ClearEventLog as an alias which automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement	Value
Minimum supported client	Windows 2000 Professional [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server	Windows 2000 Server [desktop apps only]
Target Platform	Windows
Header	winbase.h (include Windows.h)
Library	Advapi32.lib
DLL	Advapi32.dll
API set	ext-ms-win-advapi32-eventlog-ansi-l1-1-0 (introduced in Windows 10, version 10.0.10240)