Every time the AFS Client Service starts it appends data about its progress and configuration to a file.  This file provides information crucial to determining why the service cannot start when there are problems.  When the process terminates due to a panic condition it will write to this file the source code file and line number of the error.  In many cases the panic condition is due to a misconfiguration of the machine.  In other cases it might be due to a programming error in the software.  A quick review of the location in the source code will quickly reveal the reason for the termination.

The MaxLogSize registry value determines the maximum size of the %WINDIR%\TEMP\afsd_init.log file.  If the file is larger than this value when OpenAFS Client Service starts, the file will be reset to 0 bytes.  If value is set to 0, the file will be allowed to grow indefinitely.