Tag Archives: administration

View a whole log of your computer history

Do you share your computer with somebody? Ever got onto your computer and had the suspision that someone might have been on it before you? As a matter of fact, I did today and I’ve found a program (included with Vista and I believe XP as well) that will tell you all you need to know.

It’s called the Event Viewer and it seems quite an obvious program but it does a lot more than you might think.

It basically monitors every program/service used (when it was started, when it was closed, whether there were any errors and whether it accessed the Windows system files), every log on and off (and whether someone attempted to log on but failed), and other events which are more advanced.

To get to it all you need to do is fling up the Vista start menu and type in Event Viewer and press enter, and for XP head to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management. When that comes up, click Event Viewer.

Here’s what it looks like in Vista:

 

Event Viewer (Windows Vista)

Event Viewer (Windows Vista)

 Opening up Windows logs gives you the full story on everything used:

 

Detailed

Detailed

So try it for yourself, you might be surprised with what you find!