windows_exporter/docs/runbooks/windowscollectortimeout.md

title

title
WindowsCollectorTimeout

Meaning

The collector identified by the collector label has reported windows_exporter_collector_timeout == 1 for ten minutes. The collector did not finish within the scrape timeout, or its call from an earlier scrape is still running and later scrapes skip it until it returns.

Impact

The metrics of this collector are missing or stale on every scrape that times out, so dashboards show gaps and alerts on those metrics stop evaluating. A collector that never returns can hold a scrape slot and delay the other collectors of the host.

Diagnosis

1. Find the collector and compare how long it usually takes:

   windows_exporter_collector_timeout{job="windows_exporter"} == 1
   windows_exporter_collector_duration_seconds{job="windows_exporter"}
   

2. Compare the duration with the scrape timeout of the job. The exporter subtracts --scrape.timeout-margin from the scrape_timeout that Prometheus sends.

3. Check the exporter log for the collector. WMI and Management Infrastructure queries, the Task Scheduler and Windows Update are slow on hosts with many objects or a busy WMI provider; the collector's documentation lists the expensive options.

4. Check whether the host was under CPU, disk or memory pressure at the same time, and whether a Windows service the collector depends on hangs, for example Winmgmt for WMI-based collectors.

Mitigation

Raise the scrape_timeout of the job within its scrape_interval, narrow the collector with its include and exclude flags, or move the collector to a separate job with a longer timeout. Restart a hanging provider service when the log identifies it. Disable the collector on hosts where its data is not needed. Confirm windows_exporter_collector_timeout returns to 0 and the collector's metrics are published again.