If you've ever spent time troubleshooting a Windows system, you have probably dealt with event logs. Windows writes the details of several kinds of activities into two different kinds of logs. The first is called classic because this type of log has been present since the early days of Windows. The classic logs called Application, Security, Setup, and System are found on all systems. There can also be a classic log called Forwarded Events if you have subscribed to events from a remote computer. There may be other classic logs present on your system depending on what software, roles, and features you have installed.

The following screenshot shows the features of the classic log:

The newer type of event logs are an XML-based system introduced in Windows Vista and have the (not very helpful) name of Windows Event Log technology. We will call them WEL for short since Windows Event Log sounds like it could refer to either type of log. These WEL event logs are listed in a section called...