EVENT VIEWER - How to use, Windows Made Easy Options

[Doug]

To discover the type of Errors the machine has encountered recently, use Event Viewer.

1. Go to Start - Run, type eventvwr.msc, then Press Enter.
2. When the Event Viewer opens, there will be two panes.
   The left pane is for event categories (Application, Security, and System).
   The right pane is for event messages (Information, Warning, and Error). (We want to find errors.)
3. Left-click the Application category in the left pane and check for any error messages in the right pane, they will be in RED.
   You want to find the one(s) that occurred at the same time your system encountered the problem you have posted about.
4. Repeat the previous step for each category, or until you find an appropriate error to investigate.
5. Double-click the error message to bring up the information.
6. Click the third button on the right side of the information window (copies information)  EventViewerCopy.png ( 427bytes ) Number of downloads: 0
   
7. Paste the information here into your next reply

The above is primarily courtesy of Ax238

If there are more than 4 or 5 events to post, copy them all to notepad and save as a .txt file, then use the Browse and Upload buttons below the message input are to upload the .txt file here. Click on the Manage Current Attachments box to paste a link to the upload file so all can view it.

For additional "How To" illustration see this linked Event Viewer Video Tutorial by Missouri Mobile
Additional KB information from Microsoft:

Edit 07/08/09: Additional information to help interpret Error and Warning Event Types: http://www.eventid.net/
Edit 11/11/10: Add information on using Notepad and uploading as .txt if lots of events.

CODE

To discover the type of Errors the machine has encountered recently, use  [b]Event Viewer[/b].
[list=1]
[*]Go to [b]Start - Run[/b], type [b]eventvwr.msc[/b], then Press [b]Enter[/b].
[*]When the Event Viewer opens, there will be two panes.
The left pane is for event categories (Application, Security, and System).
The right pane is for event messages (Information, Warning, and Error). (We want to find errors.)
[*]Left-click the Application category in the left pane and check for any error messages in the right pane, they will be in [color="#FF0000"][b]RED[/b][/color].
You want to find the one(s) that occurred at the same time your system encountered the problem you have posted about.
[*]Repeat the previous step for each category, or until you find an appropriate error to investigate.
[*]Double-click the error message to bring up the information.
[*]Click the third button on the right side of the information window (copies information) [attachment=4701:EventViewerCopy.png]
[*]Paste the information here
[*]Additional [url="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308427"]KB information from Microsoft[/url]:
[*]Additional information to help interpret Error and Warning Event Types: http://www.eventid.net/
[/list]If there are more than 4 or 5 events to post, copy them all to notepad and save as a .txt file, then use the [b]Browse[/b] and [b]Upload[/b] buttons below the message input are to upload the .txt file here. Click on the Manage Current Attachments box to paste a link to the upload file so all can view it.

This post has been edited by Ztruker: Dec 3 2010, 08:23 PM