Submitted by Harmala Francois

EventTracker PULSE is a smart search engine for log data. Available as a free software download, it automates the real-time collection and long term archival of all log data from Windows (servers and workstations), Unix/Linux, Cisco devices, applications and any syslog source. A Google-like interface provides searching across hundreds of gigiabytes of data, allowing users to pinpoint critical data in a matter of seconds. Hundreds of preconfigured knowledge categories help users find common events such as Cisco authentication failures or Windows logon failures. In addition, an optional Windows agent provides monitoring of CPU usage, network connections, disk space utilization, capacity utilization, user activity etc.

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The NT EventLog Explorer was developed to simplify manual retrieving and creating of event log related information for Microsoft Operations Manager. However, this tool can also replace Windows Event Viewer in some situations. In particular, if you want to access the event logs of a certain application or service, you will accomplish this faster using NT Event Log Explorer.

The Explorer-like user interface lets you navigate easily to specific sources. In Event Viewer, you would use the filter or the search function to list the event log entries of a certain source. If you don’t know the exact name of the source, this can be difficult. Thus, clicking through the “Event log tree” of NT EventLog Explorer will be faster in many cases.

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The event logs are the first place to check when something goes wrong on a Windows machine. But even more important is keeping a constant eye on the event logs to make sure that you will be informed immediately about problems coming up. The Event Viewer that comes with Windows can only be used for the first purpose. If you want to keep yourself up-to-date about what is going on in your Windows network, you need a third party utility. EventSentry Light from NETIKUS.NET is a great a tool that does just that, and it is free like in beer.

The name would already let you guess that there is also a commercial version. Please, check out this comparison table regarding the differences between the two editions. This review is about EvenSentry Light. Before you try this tool, you should have a general idea of how EventSentry Light works. Even though it is free, its many options might confuse you when you just want to have a quick look at it to see if it suits your needs. This post will give you a first idea about it. I will only scratch the surface of this sophisticated tool, though.

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Submitted by morphly

Log parser is a powerful, versatile tool that provides universal query access to text-based data such as log files, XML files and CSV files, as well as key data sources on the Windows operating system such as the Event Log, the Registry, the file system, and Active Directory…just to name a few.

Logparser

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Active Directory auditing, i.e. the logging of directory service accesses, is already possible with Window Server 2000/2003. Windows Server 2008 extends the auditing capabilities of Windows Server 2003 in several interesting ways. You can use this feature, if you have to track down errors or security issues.

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BareTail from Baremetalsoft is a free Windows tool that allows you to view large log files in real-time. It displays new entries immediately after they were added. BareTail doesn’t load the complete file before it is displayed. This way you can work with very large files without any delays.

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This post is the first of a series about the changes in Group Polices in Windows Vista. You might have heard already that some of the changes are quite fundamental. In this post, I am introducing a relatively unspectacular change: Group Policy event logging. If you’ve just started playing with Vista’s Group Policies, this new feature can be quite helpful. Thus, it is a good point to start with.

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Block File Reader is a free Windows tool that allows you to split log files into smaller ones. The programmers say that they tested it with files over 60 GB. The tool also allows you to view files, but has no scroll or search function. So its purpose is only to create smaller files which can be handled easier. One can specify the number of files or the maximums file size of each file. The programmers’ web site was not available when I checked it, but you can download Block File Reader from download.com.

Recently I was looking for a tool that tells me when a certain event was logged in the Windows eventlog on our servers. Those programs are usually called eventlog monitoring tools. So I searched at download.com, tried a couple of solutions and finally chose EventMeister.

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