Recipe8.12.Finding More Information About an Event

Recipe 8.12. Finding More Information About an Event

Problem

You want to find additional information about the cause or purpose of an event. Often, the information contained in an event is not sufficient to accurately assess or troubleshoot the issue that resulted in it being created.

Solution

You have a few options for finding additional information about a particular event.

When you view the details of an event in the Event Viewer under Windows Server 2003, you will see a link at the bottom of the description for the event. If you click on that link, it will open the Help and Support Center and dynamically query the Microsoft web site to find if anymore information is available for that event. I've tested this with quite a few events and so far and most come back with no additional information. I assume that this will improve over time as Microsoft has a chance to update the site. You can also search for information about events on Microsoft's support web site (http://support.microsoft.com/).

A better source of information about events than the Microsoft Help and Support Center is the EventID web site (http://www.eventid.net/). There, they have been building a knowledge base about events since 2001. They have over 2800 events in their database that numerous contributors have commented on.

Another option is to search the newsgroup archives. People like to include event log messages in newsgroup posts when they are trying to troubleshoot a problem. It is possible that someone has posted a question about the event you are interested in. The best source for searching newsgroups is the Google Groups web site (http://groups.google.com).