Essential event viewer bugs with "Forwarded Events" log in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

Question

To my general experience, Windows event viewer is one of the most problematic, faulty management tools in the case of extensive use of its more sophisticated capabilities. The sole description as well as reproduction of some entangled failures would require
remarkable effort.
With the "Forwarded Events" log however, the situation becomes particularly worse in that even simple functionality fails and workarounds are difficult to find. That’s what I’ll describe here in order to share my experience with interested users.
For precision: I’ve extensively used event viewer on a German Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (Windows SBS 2011 Standard SP1). The bugs I found on that system, I could reproduce on a German Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit SP1, too.
Problem 1: Failure of even simple event filtering
To reproduce this problem, execute these steps on a test machine with any of the two OS mentioned above:
(i) To prepare log contents, do either of the following:
(a) populate some events to your local "Forwarded Events" log (most simply by subscribing events from other logs of the same machine; stop subscription if you have collected some events)
Or
(b) copy a non-empty log file "ForwardedEvents.evtx" from another machine (with any of the two OS mentioned above) to your test machine and open the file in event viewer.
(ii) Navigate to your "Forwarded Events" test log and open the filtering dialog. In the "Includes/Excludes Event IDs" field, type: 1-9000. Click OK.
(iii) Look at the results pane: Surprise, 0 Events! Do you really have no event IDs between 1 and 9000 in your test log?
(iv) Another example, if you have forwarded security events in your test log: Clear filter, if any previous filter is in place. Open the filtering dialog. In "Keywords" sub-dialog, choose "Audit Success". Click OK.
(v) Look at the results pane: Surprise, 0 Events! Do you really have no successful security monitoring events in your test log?
I’ll finish here. If you have a rich variety of events in your test log available, let your imagination run wild to test around. Finally include some simple manually created or modified XPath filters on the XML tab of the filtering dialog. I promise, you’ll
find a lot of additional strange results.
Problem 2: Cannot save manually selected events to .evtx file
Navigate to your "Forwarded Events" test log. In the results pane, select one or more events by highlighting them by mouse clicks. In context menu, choose "Save selected events". In the "save as" dialog, choose file type *.evtx
and save your file. Open the newly created file in event viewer. Result: Surprise, no events inside the new file!
Have more fun with forwarded events
Helmut

Answer 1

Did you mean that right click Forwarded Event and select "Filter Current Log..."? Since I can filter correct event vai the "Filter Current Log..." in my Lab environment.
Hi Justin,
yes, I mean "Filter Current Log ... " (in my German systems: "Aktuelles Protokoll filtern ... ").
What do you mean with "my Lab environment" exactly?
In the meantime, I performed additional tests. I copied the "ForwardedEvents.evtx" test file from Server 2008 R2 resp. Windows 7 to
(i) German Windows 8 Pro 64-Bit RTM
(ii) German Windows 8.1 Pro 64-Bit, up-to-date
in order to view and filter the file there.
Results: Same event viewer problem on Windows 8 RTM, but correct behavior on Windows 8.1!
Best regards, Helmut