Checking Event Viewer

If you are having problems with Windows XP, always check the Event Viewer for additional information that may be available to. Event Viewer, which is available in Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management, gives you an easy way to review system events and problems that have occurred. You can view application events, system events, and security events. Simply click the file you want to view, then double-click the event in the right console pane for details. For example, in Figure 16-20, you can see that an application hang has occurred, as noted in the right console pane.

Figure 16-20: Event Viewer

If you double-click the event, you can read more information about the application hang and discover which application was running when the problem occurred, as shown in Figure 16-21. Event Viewer is rather intuitive and easy to use, so make sure you don’t forget about it when you are trying to sort through problems; it can be a great source of information.

Figure 16-21: Event description