Mirror failure after windows updates - possible cause?
We had to bring MS in on this one via a paid support call. After a week of dumps, xperf analysis, driver updates, playig with Virtual infrastructure we ruled out all the basics (or so we thought) - over a week later we found the problem - there was over 500,000 sys.server_event_notifications defined - these all looked as follows:

name    object_id   parent_class    parent_class_desc   parent_id   create_date modify_date service_name    broker_instance creator_sid principal_id
SQLWEP_E0B9EA66_1E73_45B7_B528_75166DC7A15D 337640  100 SERVER  0   2013-06-14 01:56:27.077 2013-06-14 01:56:27.077 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_6492D14E_99D2_49F2_9CD9_43F4B7DC7F63 338711  100 SERVER  0   2013-02-12 17:50:55.897 2013-02-12 17:50:55.897 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_C9871B51_F866_48A6_862E_08EC4F92DAFA 351457  100 SERVER  0   2013-03-06 02:04:18.070 2013-03-06 02:04:18.070 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_0E5D8FAF_1A9C_43FA_8EDF_A5713A8C7825 362061  100 SERVER  0   2014-02-08 04:57:17.217 2014-02-08 04:57:17.217 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_712ED252_E529_4022_9EA3_C785BAEB8147 364203  100 SERVER  0   2013-04-05 15:52:11.190 2013-04-05 15:52:11.190 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_E2D31BC2_E416_4D12_8B4A_88F4183FE021 374807  100 SERVER  0   2014-03-15 13:31:25.390 2014-03-15 13:31:25.390 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_7B389ACB_EA1F_434C_8B2A_7B93D4D0F098 376949  100 SERVER  0   2013-05-12 05:02:12.450 2013-05-12 05:02:12.450 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_4A828CDE_D72D_4277_97C0_030686F86377 378020  100 SERVER  0   2013-01-21 16:49:04.780 2013-01-21 16:49:04.780 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_4EA3C2AD_ACCE_4A66_83E9_0676D2250C34 387553  100 SERVER  0   2014-04-24 20:26:31.053 2014-04-24 20:26:31.053 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259
SQLWEP_6EA3C0FB_6EDA_4B9D_A3FE_D2B07799212C 389695  100 SERVER  0   2013-06-16 18:07:06.043 2013-06-16 18:07:06.043 SQL/Notifications/ProcessWMIEventProviderNotification/v1.0  706DF30B-6BD5-458B-85A4-F1C174263ADE    0x010100000000000512000000  259


These had all been created gradually over 5 years, what they are, where they come from, no one could say &amp; MS couldn't find any related alerts to justify them either. Dropping 1 notification took 4 seconds so we would have been looking at 22 days to drop them all - suffice to say we ended up nuking the SQL instance &amp; re-installing SQL from scratch.