Event Viewer logging only since last power on


  1. Posts : 27
    Windows 10 Pro 21H1
       #1

    Event Viewer logging only since last power on


    I'm experiencing this weird freezing issue where I could be playing a game and suddenly everything will pause, and yet some parts of programs will be active. Such as in Battlefront II just now, I could move the camera around my character as he was frozen mid-run, but everything else about the game was stopped. WinAmp was playing in the background and that stopped. I was able to open task manager and kill Battlefront but much of Windows was non-responsive. I was able to bring up the start menu with the Windows key but clicking on the Windows button or anything inside the menu did nothing. This has happened several times in the last month and it's getting really annoying.

    My only current guess for a culprit is DisplayFusion, which I've been running for the past month after getting a new monitor and running my old one in portrait display. But before I write the useful DisplayFusion off and look for a replacement, I'd like to know exactly what is going on with Windows when these crashes occur, and so we come to the reason for my post.

    Event Viewer is only showing events since the system was last powered on, and nothing from before. I don't think I've ever seen this before on older systems of mine, it's always showed at least the last few days worth of activity. But this time I can open it up, go to Windows Logs > System and it'll only show maybe five entries when I open it directly after logging in.

    I've looked around for possible fixes for this but all I can find is stuff about the log size (not an issue, I've expanded it massively and it's made no difference), and to select "Archive the log when full - do not overwrite events", which I have.

    Any ideas as to why on this install of Windows Event Viewer is refusing to show past logs?
      My Computers


  2. Posts : 42,634
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #2

    Hi, background:
    The event viewer logs
    are located in the folder C:\Windows\System32\winevt\Logs with the extension .evtx
    If you have anything that clears that that could explain them being deleted.

    Try a clean boot (Google or see tutorial) and then see if the event log is retained or not on boot.

    In general there are ways of clearing the logs:
    How to Clear All Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows - MajorGeeks
    but I doubt that's relevant here.


    Any ideas as to why on this install of Windows Event Viewer is refusing to show past logs?
    Which one? The forum prompted you thus:
    Event Viewer logging only since last power on-win-10-version.png

    See if you still experience freezes after a clean boot (unfortunately need to run for 'long enough' which makes it difficult.
    Try Safe Mode.

    Search tenforums for threads on freezes for ideas- posted previously:
    - check RAM
    - check disk(s) (one user's disk was failing) - Hard Disk Sentinel (SSDs too) is excellent.
    - try booting from a live boot disk and see if there are any freezes so as to be independent of your disk and installed O/S
    - are you overclocking?
    - is all your RAM consistent and correct?

    Freezes could be hardware or software-related. You need to separate the two.
    Even a PSU problem could lead to freezes.

    Normally there are no logs that are helpful when considering freezes. However your problem sounds more software than hardware.

    Check your Reliability History for crash reports.
      My Computers


  3. Posts : 27
    Windows 10 Pro 21H1
    Thread Starter
       #3

    I did indeed see the option to include the Windows version number - just as I clicked post and it disappeared. I did try to edit the post and see if it gave me the option but unless I missed something very obvious I couldn't see it. But for clarity's sake, it's Version 20H2 (OS Build 19042.804).

    Reliability Monitor shows a program here or there "stopped working" or "stopped responding and was closed", but I can't count on this as a marker for what's going on as it didn't count for this morning and yesterday when I had crashes. Running sfc /scannow it did find and fix a few corrupt files - a suggestion I found from Microsoft's support forums on difficult to diagnose crashes, but of course since then it has crashed twice. Memory is fine, it's running in XMP mode but it ran Memtest with no errors. Disks all check out fine. I have not overclocked anything.

    I should note that I've only seen it crash when running a particular game, if I'm remembering correctly, the one I mentioned above - Star Wars Battlefront II. Interestingly, it only happens if I disable Radeon Chill, which limits the frame rate of the game to whatever you set it to. If I disable it, the pc runs the game at the best frame rate it can, unrestricted. This is the only time it's crashed to the best of my recollection so far. Keeping Chill enabled has not seen any crashes so that is at least something I can fall back on, even if it's a little annoying that I'm losing out on a smoother gameplay experience because of it.
      My Computers


  4. Posts : 42,634
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #4

    At this point you don't seem to have one scenario where you are confident there is no freezing.

    Superficially this seems to be occuring when you are running game-related software.

    You might start by not running games, and then try to isolate the cause of your event viewer logs being deleted. I.e. does that happen if you don't run 3rd party programs?

    Disks all check out fine.
    May I ask how you have checked them?
      My Computers


  5. Posts : 27
    Windows 10 Pro 21H1
    Thread Starter
       #5

    I've never had a reason to look at Event Viewer when it's not crashing, which it isn't the vast majority of the time it's turned on, so I've never seen if it's randomly deleting the current log throughout the day. I just checked now and it's showing activity since the machine was last turned on, so I can only guess that it's not. Since the crash only happens during one particular game, it's not going to happen while I'm sitting on the desktop or running Lightroom or even another game (so far).

    As for the disks, I checked using HDDScan and tried a few SMART and read/write tests. All came out fine.
      My Computers


  6. Posts : 27
    Windows 10 Pro 21H1
    Thread Starter
       #6

    Is there no way of stopping Windows from deleting logs? I just had a crash now and the first two events in Event Viewer are saying that the Application Log and System Log were cleared. I really can't find anything online about stopping this from happening, but surely someone in here knows something about it...
      My Computers


  7. Posts : 42,634
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #7

    Are you using any 3rd party cleaners or have you set up any non-default cleaning options?

    Perhaps

    Windows event logs clears or delete itself?? - Windows Server - Spiceworks

    Try a clean boot (Google or tutorial if unsure how).
    Make sure some events are logged.
    Restart and check again. Post the result
      My Computers


 

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