Brightrev

Windows Vista has excellent and often overlooked problem logging and diagnostic features.  When an application or the operating system crashes, Windows Vista logs the event and searches for solutions automatically.  If Vista can't find a solution right away, it's possible go back, look at the list and try again to see if solutions are available.  Keep reading to find out how.

Problem tracking and diagnostics are areas where Windows Vista is far and away better than Windows XP.  The ironic part about the "Vista sucks" bandwagon is that Vista will actually tell you if it sucks.  Windows XP kept basic event logs, but they were overwritten quickly and you needed a fairly high level of expertise to identify and solve problems.  Windows Vista improves this area dramatically.  I wrote previously about how to generate system diagnostics and performance reports that are unique to Vista.

To take a look at Vista's problem history, click Start -> Control Panel and then type Problem in the search box.

Click the link to Problem Reports and Solutions.

The first option is to check for new solutions.  The solutions I see generally say that a newer version of the application is available or provide instructions on getting help from the vendor. 

The existing solutions aren't incredibly useful, but the good part is that the infrastructure exists for proactively identifying and resolving problems, not just with Vista, but with third party applications. 

Vista's problem history is an extremely useful list of compatibility issues, driver problems and crashes, grouped by application.  This is great as a quick visual of which applications cause the most problems and how often the issues occur.  It's also excellent from a technician's perspective in the sense that users don't have to track how often an application crashes.  If someone reports errors with a specific app, it's easy to look into the problem history list and find out exactly when and how many times the errors occurred.   

Right-clicking any of the entries allows brings up details of that event, including the application's version, error code and other information.

Problems with the OS and applications are a reality in any modern operating system.  As I mentioned in the intro, problem tracking with Windows XP was a guessing game.  Windows Vista has better tools to identify, report and diagnose problems with the operating system and third party applications than any previous Windows release.

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