Ever left your computer alone for 5 minutes to come back and realize it crashed and restarted itself?

Here’s a quick guide on how to keep a log of your shutdowns. Logging will give you a time and reason for your crash/unplanned shutdown so hopefully you can fix the problem.

Step 1: Go to the start menu, click Run and then type in ‘regedit’. You should see a screen that looks like this:

Step 2: Find your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Reliability.  The complete path is located in the bottom left corner of the window.

Step 3: Right click on ‘ShutdownReasonUI’ (if you don’t have that file go to step 3.1) then click Modify. You should see something like this:

Step 3.1: (This is ONLY if don’t have the ShutdownReasonUI file). We are going to create the file: Just right-click in the white space on the right. Hover over ‘new’ and then click ‘DWORD Value’. Change the name to ShutdownReasonUI and then go back to Step 3.

Step 4: Change the Value Data entry box to 1. Then click OK and restart your computer.

To find the logs that have been created go to: Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Click on the System subtab on the left and it will list your logs. Errors are marked with a red X or a yellow exclamation mark. Just click on the error and it will give you even more information.