Event Viewer for XP

By Jesse Franklin

There are three differnt event groups on every system: Application, Security, and System; servers wil typically have others depending on what roles they provide. When you chose one of the groups in the Event Viewer you will see a list dating back for some time. This list is full of 'Events'. Each event tells crucial information about your system. You can tell what type of event occurred, the date and time that the event occurred, and the source, category, and many other facts for each event. When you right-click and go to properties or double-click on a particular event, a box will appear that has a summary of the event. There are also links and technical information here. The links are very helpful sometimes and often lead directly to an update that will solve the problem for you. The technical information is a bit confusing at first, but if you are patient and read it carefully, it might make a bit of sense.

Application events display information about applications and programs. If a program you are using has a problem, chances are you will find detailed information here about the errors that had occurred. It is good to check this list often. You will learn a lot about how your computer is running. Scroll through the list using the up or down arrows in the box.

The Security events can display several kinds of security related issues such as failed login attempts, user logins (great for verifying people's timeclocks), elevated privleges, system policy modifications, and account creations. By default workstations do not have security logging enabled, refer to our article on Enabling Security Logging, for more information.

System events are logs about all the drivers and system files that are being used by your operating system. If a program fails to load, this is where you will find out about it. If a program normally loads during startup and doesn't, an error log will be placed in the system event log.

Article last reviewed: 03/04/2004

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