Error logs in Windows 7

[Jeremy]

Hey Mike

Recently my computer seems to lock up out of nowhere. Can happen anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 days after a reboot. I can be doing anything from viewing a video to clicking a link to scratching my butt.

Where in Windows can I view what happened right before the crash so I can hopefully figure out whats causing this?

[Ludwick413]

Hey Mike

Recently my computer seems to lock up out of nowhere. Can happen anywhere from 2 minutes to 2 days after a reboot. I can be doing anything from viewing a video to clicking a link to scratching my butt.

Where in Windows can I view what happened right before the crash so I can hopefully figure out whats causing this?

Jeremy, you can do a couple of things. If your computer runs long enough, you can goto "Start, and in the "Search Programs and Files" box, just type "Event Viewer" - It will start pre-populating itself -

From there under "Windows Logs", check your Application and System events - You can look at the times your computer shut down, or sort by Level - Look for anything labled "Error" - Most of the times the errors are rather vague, so you may have to google search them.

If your computer will not run long enough to do this, we can export the logs using Powershell - I think Windows 7 has it installed by default now -

Goto "Start -> All Programs -> look for "Windows Powershell" - You may have verison 1 or 2, doesnt matter -

Right click on "Windows Powershell" from the menu and slecet "Run as Administrator" (you will need to do this in order to be able to export the files)

This should bring up a big blue screen, looks like a DOS prompt, but better...

Type or paste this in -

This one will pull the System logs and export them to a text file called systemlogs.txt on the root of C.

get-eventlog -logname system -newest 1000 | Export-Csv c:\systemlogs.txt

This one will pull the Application logs and export them to a text file called applicationslogs.txt on the root of C.

get-eventlog -logname system -newest 1000 | Export-Csv c:\applicationslogs.txt

You can then email those files to one of us and we can look at them also. Let me know if this helps or not.

[ElderGeek]

So I am sure, it is locking up as in the mouse and KB stop working, screen stays where its at. No blue screens?

[Jeremy]

Correct. And if I'm playing music it just goes to DDNNNNNNN through the speakers. No blue screen.

[ElderGeek]

Just a few things to think about while reading the system logs:

You didn't change or add any hardware or update any drivers about the time this started? Did it do this from the beginning?

Did you test the Ram?

Hopefully the reports will point us in a direction.

[ElderGeek]

What do the reports tell you??

[Sazjun]

If nothing shows up in the event logs that relates to the problem, just the note that the last shutdown was unexpected followed by the usual startup events, and you have to reboot every time. This might be a hard drive issue too. Make a backup copy of everything that matters to you then run the usual error checking and defrag tools found by right-clicking the Hard Drive Icon in My Computer and choosing Properties, then the Tools tab. When asked, let it do the "run the chkdsk /f at next startup" option.