Thanks for the response Glenn. I did some additional testing with the different versions and it looks like the version of NetSH in syswow64 (the 64 bit version) doesn't even have the trace command available. If I launch the 32 bit version of netsh from c:\windows\system32\netsh.exe everything is there. Oddly enough I tried the following and it still failed with the same error.

Code:
$Cmd = "c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe /c c:\windows\system32\netsh.exe trace stop"
'Running: ' $Cmd @CRLF
Shell $Cmd
@SERROR @CRLF
sleep 10

Very very weird.....

Note: Understand your point around env. variables...I always use them first but am spelling it out here so everyone can see the paths.