What is "in the windows event viewer?

The Windows Event Viewer is a crucial tool for troubleshooting and monitoring Windows operating systems. It records events that occur within the system, providing a detailed log of application, security, and system activities. Here's a breakdown of key aspects:

• Purpose: The primary purpose is to log significant events, allowing administrators and users to identify and diagnose problems, monitor system performance, and investigate security incidents.
• Event Logs: Event Viewer organizes events into several logs, each dedicated to specific categories:
  • Application Log: Records events logged by applications or programs. These events might include application errors, warnings, or informational messages.
  • Security Log: Contains audit records related to security events, such as successful and failed login attempts, resource access, and privilege changes. Note: This log requires audit policies to be enabled for events to be recorded.
  • System Log: Records events related to the Windows operating system, such as system startup and shutdown, driver issues, and hardware failures.
  • Setup Log: Contains events related to application installation.
  • Forwarded Events: This log is used to collect events from remote computers.
• Event Types: Events are classified into different types based on their severity and nature:
  • Error: Indicates a significant problem that may result in loss of functionality or data.
  • Warning: Indicates a potential problem or an event that may lead to issues in the future.
  • Information: Provides general information about an event or operation.
  • Audit Success: Records successful security-related events, such as successful login attempts, when auditing is enabled.
  • Audit Failure: Records failed security-related events, such as failed login attempts, when auditing is enabled.
• Event Identifiers (Event IDs): Each event is assigned a unique numeric ID, which can be helpful in researching and troubleshooting specific issues. Searching for these Event%20IDs online can often provide valuable insights.
• Filtering and Searching: Event Viewer provides powerful filtering and searching capabilities, allowing you to quickly locate specific events based on criteria such as event type, source, user, date/time, and Event ID.
• Custom Views: You can create custom views to filter and display only the events that are relevant to your specific needs.
• Task Scheduler Integration: Event Viewer can be integrated with the Task Scheduler, allowing you to trigger actions based on specific events.
• Accessing Event Viewer: You can access Event Viewer by searching for it in the Start Menu, running eventvwr.msc, or through Computer Management.
• Event Subscriptions: Event Viewer allows for collecting events from remote machines, centralizing the logs to a single place for easier management.