Windows Event Log Rotation?

It seems like most people don't know about this feature, but Windows will rotate the log files automatically if so-configured. Look for "AutoBackupLogFiles" in this file.

You can configure this on a server-for-server basis, but that's tedious for a large number of servers. I created an Administrative Template to set this on server computers, and then scripted a startup script to add a scheduled task to periodically pick up, ZIP, and move the log files to a retention location. It worked really well, and was cheap!

http://mx02.wellbury.com/misc/EventLogPolicy.adm

Here's a VBS script that will save your event log and clear it. Put this in a scheduled task. Note that the specific event log is specified in line 3 of the script and that you'll obviously want to tweak the target path.

Code "borrowed" (ie- stolen) from MSDN.

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate,(Backup)}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colLogFiles = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * from Win32_NTEventLogFile Where LogFileName='Application'")
For Each objLogfile in colLogFiles
    errBackupLog = objLogFile.BackupEventLog("c:\\application" & year(Now) & "_" & month(Now) & "_" & day(Now) & "_" & hour(now) & "_" & minute(now) & ".evt")
    objLogFile.ClearEventLog
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