What is the equivalent of dmesg on WinXP and later?

The output from dmesg is often useful for determining which hardware is detected on a given system but it is also very useful for looking at hardware errors such as when wifi interface won't work or when a a hard drive is about to die.

I would very much like to learn about a Windows alternative to read kernel messages of that sort. I imagine It could be useful in determining the cause of the bsod in some cases.

Ярослав Рахматуллин

Posted 2012-11-07T06:33:18.060

Reputation: 9 076

Answers

There is the system error log ("eventvwr.msc"), but it's not as descriptive as dmesg. There's also C:\BOOT.LOG, where available.

pjc50

Posted 2012-11-07T06:33:18.060

Reputation: 5 786

I will have to look closer at that viewer thing. Doesn't look very useful right-off. – Ярослав Рахматуллин – 2012-11-11T05:19:17.800

1Linux generally has better messages than windows because there is the possibility of the user hacking the source and fixing it. A lot of Windows stuff fails silently or opaquely. Having said that, eventvwr offers a link to the Knowledgebase for an error message which is often quite good. – pjc50 – 2012-11-12T09:33:36.300

see wevtutil and Sysinternals' psloglist

eadmaster

Posted 2012-11-07T06:33:18.060

Reputation: 706

1Specifically wevutil qe system /f:Text /rd | more is probably the closest command-line equivalent for the Windows System log. But the messages are not as informative. – LawrenceC – 2015-10-02T15:19:18.693