Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 Inside Out

Tracking Events and Troubleshooting by Using Event Viewer

The Windows operating system defines an event as any significant occurrence in the operating system or an application that should be recorded for tracking purposes. Informational events can be tracked as well as events that record warnings, errors, and auditing. Critical errors that deserve immediate attention, such as when the server has run out of disk space or memory, are recorded in the logs and displayed on screen.

Understanding the Event Logs

The Windows service that controls event logging is the Event Log service. When this service is started, events are recorded in one of the available event logs. On member servers, you'll find three event logs:

• Application Contains events logged by ...