Windows 7: Crashing after update - How to check Event Logs?

Question

My desktop appears to be blue screening and restarting after Win7 hard drive installation.

How can I navigate to event viewer in Win 7 and see when was the last time it crashed unexpectedly?

Solution 1

The Event Viewer log you need to look at is Custom Views > Administrative Events, they will be flagged as Error or Critical

These logs won't tell you much about what caused it, look and see if you have a folder in the Windows directory called Minidump, see if there are any .dmp files in there.

C:\Windows\Minidump

You can then use BlueScreenView to look at the dump file

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

Solution 2

You can also view events using the reliability tool in Windows 7 for additional information.

Click start and type "reliability". It may show multiple items, select "Reliability Monitor". Then select the day that the event occurred and enjoy!

Just as a side note, the tool is located in: Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Action Center > Reliability Monitor.

Solution 3

Assuming the blue screen is not preventing Windows from loading...

Start-->eventvwr.msc

Or, right-click Computer and choose Manage, and then chose Event Viewer in the left pane.

Comments

[Daniel Sokolowski]

NirSoft makes some awesome freeware utilities! Thanks for sharing.