Laptop Info Today

The Event Viewer? What’s that?

These are the questions I received often and to tell you frankly, it took me about 10 minutes at least to educate my friends on what is event viewer, why it is useful and when you wanted to know what happen to your laptop or PC.

The event  viewer is the least used and most under-rated tool (and I mean that) by fellow Windows users. The event viewer is simply a log which notes any instance of the operating system.

Let me explain in a much easier term.

I give an example :- When an application (let’s say Windows Explorer crashes), this instance will be logged to the event viewer.

The screenshot above shows there’s an error with the NetLogon and an error indication will be further explained once you double click on that error information.

Once you double click on the error information a pop up will appear stating the error details. True some the details provide no troubleshooting solutions but you need to take note is the event ID.

Google up the event ID and the error ( in this case NetLogon) on the net. The solutions will be available out there somewhere but at the very least you now know what is the cause of you computer’s crashes, hanging, slow performance, etc.

The event viewer is divided to 3 categories :- application, system, security. Some might have more, like mine 3 additional …. anti-virus, microsoft office diagnostics and microsoft office sessions.

Most importantly is you take care the error issues (marked in red) and for the warning you might need not care about it much cause if you do it will be a never-ending story.

To see your event viewer (in XP and Vista) simply go to Start >Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer.

Below is the screenshot of the Event Viewer in Windows Vista.

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