How to Debug Your System: Use the Event Viewer

Contributed by MickeyMouse September 13, 2004  
Tagged: Windows

The Event Viewer will give you an insight to what is happening with your system. If you don’t know what is happening, this is a good place to start.

When a system is not acting correctly, often people do not know what to do. Spyware and viruses are the most common causes. However, driver, memory, and other errors are commonly missed as well. Often these missed errors are what causes a system to slow down after a time.

Another advantage of using the event viewer is that it allows the user to be able to easily google for an problem. Googling for “icons flash” or “explorer crash” is too broad to be useful. However, googling for the event error number when these events occur can be very helpful.

Opening the Event Viewer:

1. Open the Control Panel
2. Click Administrative Tools (classic view)
3. Click Computer Management
4. Click Event Viewer
5. Click the application, security, and system logs and explore each error. The errors are timed so look at the one timed close to your worrisome event.

One of the typical errors that people have is that their icons disappear and reappear… or explorer randomly hangs. When this happens, go the the event viewer and see why it happened.

If you don’t understand the error, look it up at the Microsoft’s Events and Errors Message Center.