Create Custom Events with a Single Command

The Windows Event Viewer is a toolthat can provide you with useful information regarding your computer'shealth. It contains at least three logs:the Application log (which containsevents generated by applications), the Security log (which containssecurity-related events generated byWindows), and the System log (whichcontains system-wide events generatedby Windows). Each log displays Information, Warning, and Error events,which are accompanied by the nameof the source component that raisedthe event, a brief event description,and an event ID. Administrators relyon these logs not only for informationabout problems (e.g., failure to start a service) but also for informationabout successful operations (e.g., successful RAS connections).

Sometimes it's useful to log yourown events. For example, I have astartup script that I've scheduled torun every night. I recently found away to log its events so that I couldmake sure it was successfully executing. You can log events by using theEventcreate command. The basicsyntax that I use is:

Eventcreate /ID EventID   /L LogName /T Type /SO Source /D Description 

where

For example, I created the following event to be logged whenever mystartup script successfully executes.Note that this command has to beentered inside the startup script:

Eventcreate /ID 123   /L Application /T Information  /SO StartupScript /D "Startup script executed!"

You can even write events to a logon another computer by using theeventcreate command's /S Computerparameter (where Computer is themachine's name). If you need tospecify alternate credentials for the remote-computer, you can use the /U User and /P Password parameters (where User andPassword are the credentials). For information about these three parameters, open a command prompt and type

eventcreate /? 

The Eventcreatecommand works onWindows Server 2003and Windows XP. Ihaven't tested it on anyother OSs.