Why does SQL Server Profiler crash when its run against a DB machine from a client machine? I have:


SQL Server 2014 (default instance )is on a Win Server 2012 machine.
SQL Server Management Studio (v17.7) is on a Win 7 machine.
Both machines are on the same domain.
I'm logged into the Win 7 machine as a domain admin.
My domain admin account has SQL Server Security sysadmin
access.


On the Win 7 machine, I bring up SSMS and I connect OK to the DB that is on the Win Server 2012 machine. However, on SSMS, when I do Tools -&gt; SQL Server Profiler, I get a dialog "Profile Application has stopped working". The event log shows the following which seems weird because I would expect Profiler.exe to be run on the remote Win Server 2012 DB machine

Why does SQL Server Profiler crash when its run against a DB machine from a client machine?

Faulting application name: Profiler.exe, version: 2017.140.17254.0, time stamp: 0x5ae98b94
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x75bb48cb
Faulting process id: 0x4e0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d42da026f3a3d9
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\140\Tools\Binn\Profiler.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: 652f0139-9993-11e8-9f5b-327e82b70454
The profiler.exe will run on the local Windows 7 machine, where you have the Management Studio installed. It will connect to remote instance over network to collect the data, but the profiler.exe itself will run locally on your computer. If you want the collection to happen at the same server where the SQL Server is installed, then you need to implement server-side tracing for that.

A good example of how to set it up, can be found here.

Also by starting Profiler the way you described should first prompt for server details (server name, credentials) even if you have server connection open in the Object Explorer. Now I believe it crashed before ever getting there, so the problem is probably not related to connecting to remote server at all. I would recommend re-installing Management Studio to see if it fixes the issue.

Latest stand-alone installers for SSMS can be found from here.