Large? Dr Watson Log File

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Laine
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Mike Laine

I have had this computer 6 months with no problems, using XP Home and
am concerned at the size of DRWTSN32.LOG which is 733,866KB. Is this
OK? It seems to be rather large for a text file.
TIA
Mike.
 
If you have a lot of program errors, drwtsn32.log will get huge.

Either delete the drwtsn32.log or open it and delete the contents.

To open Dr. Watson...
Start | Run | Type: drwtsn32 | OK |

drwtsn32.exe = DrWatson Postmortem Debugger

drwtsn32.exe lives here >>>
C:\WINDOWS\system32
and
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache

drwtsn32.log should be here, if Dr Watson has ever run >>

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson\

If a program error occurs, Dr. Watson will start automatically.

Dr. Watson is a program error debugger that detects and diagnoses program
errors and creates User.dmp and DrWtsn32.log files to contain the diagnostic
data.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
Mike Laine said:
I have had this computer 6 months with no problems, using XP Home and
am concerned at the size of DRWTSN32.LOG which is 733,866KB. Is this
OK? It seems to be rather large for a text file.
TIA
Mike.
Click to expand...


As far as I am concerned, 1 byte is excessively large for a Dr. Watson
log file.

In my opinion it is the most useless component of Windows XP and one
which I routinely dispense with whenever I find it running on a
system.

I have never encountered a situation where Dr. Watson was of any value
whatever in identifying the cause or helping to fix a problem.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm
 
If you have a lot of program errors, drwtsn32.log will get huge.

Either delete the drwtsn32.log or open it and delete the contents.

To open Dr. Watson...
Start | Run | Type: drwtsn32 | OK |

drwtsn32.exe = DrWatson Postmortem Debugger

drwtsn32.exe lives here >>>
C:\WINDOWS\system32
and
C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache

drwtsn32.log should be here, if Dr Watson has ever run >>

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson\

If a program error occurs, Dr. Watson will start automatically.

Dr. Watson is a program error debugger that detects and diagnoses program
errors and creates User.dmp and DrWtsn32.log files to contain the diagnostic
data.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, Wesley, at least I can free up some memory but I
would rather it wasn't so big in the first place.
Mike
 
As far as I am concerned, 1 byte is excessively large for a Dr. Watson
log file.

In my opinion it is the most useless component of Windows XP and one
which I routinely dispense with whenever I find it running on a
system.

I have never encountered a situation where Dr. Watson was of any value
whatever in identifying the cause or helping to fix a problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks for confirming this, Ron, I feel a lot better now.
Mike
 
Mike,

[[Dr. Watson also records an entry in the Event Viewer Application Log
containing the program name, date, time, exception number, exception name,
program counter, and function name at the current program counter, as well
as the complete diagnostic information that was logged for that error.]]

So deleting everything in drwtsn32.log doesn't matter, you can read about it
in the Event Viewer.

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In
 
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