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The Event Viewer

There is a wealth of information available in the Event Viewer of Microsoft Windows XP. This viewer records various events as they occur on your machine. It can be very helpful in diagnosing a problem and also instrumental in warning of impending problems. To get to the viewer, open your Control Panel. If you are not in the category view, switch to it.

Choose Performance and Maintenance, and then Administrative Tools. Under the Administrative Tools, Choose Event Viewer.

There are three folders: Application, Security and System.

Application

Double click on Application. Scroll down to look for errors and warnings. Double clicking on any item will bring up more details. Some items you can safely ignore. For example, if you lose your internet connection, you might get a number of DHCP errors. These will stop appearing when you reconnect.

Under the up and down arrow is an icon that will copy the contents of that entry to the clipboard for you.

Security

In the security folder, you should be seeing ‘success audit’. If you see any number of ‘failure audits’ you should investigate further.

System

One thing to look for in the system folder is any indication of Disk errors. Sometimes these can be caused by a virus or spyware slowing down your system. However, if you see a number of disk errors, if can also be an indication that your hard drive is failing.

Last modified:  11/10/06