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Error Report Log Location

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by blaine moore

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I keep getting errors that read as follows:

Whatever.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program.

An Error log is being created.

This runs the gamut from office products to adobe and others. First: Where is the error log located since I can't seem to find them. And second, does anybody know offhand why this keeps happening and how I can prevent it (which hopefully will be evidenced by the logs if I ever find them)?

And uninstalling/reinstalling the software makes no difference.

3 replies

by beermonster

Hi,
When the widows OS realises that there's a major problem, it will call a debug program to examine and log the fault. The debug program used can be altered (hklm\software\microsoft\windowsnt\aedebug on an NT machine), but by default is drwatson.exe, located in your system32 directory. The log can be found (again on NT) at winnt\drwatson.log. I suspect that this will not be of great help to you, as it logs which app caused the problem (which you already know) as well as all other loaded apps and the memory locations they were loaded into. It's primarily to help developers track memory errors (IE an app trying to access memory that it doesn't 'own') - hence the memory locations. I'm guessing, if you have problems with various apps, that there's something running on your machine thats causing these issues - a virus scanner perhaps ?? If I were you I'd look at what's on the box and selectively uninstall apps to see if the problem goes away. Target any software that is loaded at startup (third party messaging software, real player etc etc) rather than 'well known' apps such as office - but any AV software is a prime candidate. Hope this helps...

by blaine moore

Well, I found the log, and while the answer didn't help me solve my problem nobody else seems to be trying to help.

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