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The Windows Event Log service wasn't started and when I tried to start it, received the error:
"Error code: 4201 - The instance name passed was not recognized as valid by a WMI data provider." when trying to do so.
It turned out that the issue was in the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger.
Several subkeys were missing, including EventLog-Application, EventLog-Security and EventLog-System. Suspecting that the subkeys were somehow corrupted, I exported the key for one of the ControlSet002, ControlSet003, ControlSet004, and reimported them after editing the exported file to change the base key from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSetXXX\Control\WMI\Autologger to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Autologger. I then rebooted (after trying to start the Windows Event Log service - it still wasn't able to start), and it was able to start on its own.
A method to design records so that they're allocated on a specific byte boundary, such as 16 bytes, 512 bytes, 4096 bytes, etc.