Thursday, September 29, 2016

Program not starting? Check the event logs

Today I investigated a problem in which some application wasn't starting. I say the vague "some application" because I didn't know what was actually supposed to come up; I just knew something should have appeared after invoking a command in a different program. I went and checked the event logs (in Event Viewer) to see if anything unusual happened.

Indeed, there were errors in the Application log stating that AcroRd32.exe had crashed. Adobe Reader seemed like a reasonable application to come up in this instance, and sure enough, reinstalling it let the original application put up a PDF it created.

If you find an application crash recorded in the event logs and you don't recognize the process name, try Googling for it; that usually turns up something relevant.

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