If you want to know what is Windows Event Viewer and How to use it, you can go through this article. It will explain everything in details.
The windows users often hear about Windows Event Viewer. But, Most of them don’t know about it properly. In fact, It is one of the tools that comes with every windows by default. Experts often suggest this tool to diagnose various system errors.
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What is Windows Event Viewer?
Windows Event Viewer is a built-in tool that shows the event logs of a local machine or remote computer. It contains various system messages about errors and warnings. This tool is pretty helpful to diagnose Windows problems. Usually, It shows various warnings and errors even when your PC is working fine. So, You can ignore most of the warning messages. The system administrator can see the event logs using the event viewer to diagnose current system errors and future problems. Actually, The event viewer has various usages. But, The main purpose is to help in troubleshooting windows problems.
How to Use Windows Event Viewer
It is really easy to use this tool. You can just launch the event viewer and view the event logs. That’s it.
Run Event Viewer:
To launch this tool, you can follow these ways.
From Start Menu –
- At first, Open the Start Menu. Type, “Event Viewer” and hit enter. It will open the Windows Event Viewer.
Using Run Command –
- You can open run by pressing on Windows + R key on the keyboard.
- Then, Type eventvwr and hit enter.
In the command prompt or PowerShell, you can also type eventvwr and press enter. It will open the Windows Event Viewer.
View Event Records:
After opening it, you can start viewing the event logs. Usually, You will see various categories and sub-categories. When you open it, you will see the following things.
- Custom Views
- Windows Logs
- Application and Services Logs
- Subscriptions.
Each of them has different usages. But, You will probably use the Windows logs in most cases. Especially, You may view the followings under Windows logs more.
- Application Logs: Usually, The application logs contain the event information related to the system components like drivers, apps, etc.
- Security Logs: It shows the event logs related to the security such as login attempts, accesses, and permissions to various resources in your PC.
- System Logs: The system logs contain information about various installed programs and services on Windows.
You will see the categories on the left side of the Windows Event Viewer. Viewing the logs is very easy. You can just browse each category and double-click on records to view. If you right-click on the events, you will see additional options like Event Properties, Save selected events, Attach task to this event, etc. You can choose whatever you want.
Clear Logs:
It is possible to clear all logs from event viewer. If you want to do it, follow these steps.
- First of all, Expand Windows Logs or any other options you want.
- Now, Right-click on the record type like Application or Security or anything you want and choose “Clear Log.”
It will clean all logs related to that category.
Additional Things:
If you right-click on events or records, you will have other options to view event details, save events, attach additional tasks etc. You can just try them by yourself.
Connect to Another Computer:
If you ware a system administrator, you can view events from all other computers in your network. If you want to connect a computer to view logs, just right-click on the “Event Viewer (Local” and choose “Connect to another computer”. Follow onscreen instructions.
Usages of Windows Event Viewer
Average users are not aware of this tool. In fact, Most of them don’t need it. But, The Event viewer can be really helpful when you want to troubleshoot any critical errors on Windows 10. Especially, To identify the source of the problems like the Blue screen of death, the event viewer can play a big role.
There are other usages too. If you want to know how much time your PC took to boot up completely, you can know it by using the event viewer. For the system administrators, it can be used in many ways. For example, They can track shutdown or startup time and reason of all computer in their network after configuring special settings. Else, You can find many other benefits of the Windows Event Viewer.
