2.7System Documentation and Logs

This is the last topic of the unit, and it is a short one. It is about a simple habit: writing down what you do to a computer. In the earlier topics you learned to monitor, repair, restore and clean a system. This topic says one thing more. Keep a record of that work.

So record keeping is not extra work on the side. It is part of maintenance itself, just like cleaning the disk or scanning for viruses.

The book names three kinds of jobs that you should document:

• installing software
• fixing issues
• performing updates

A record does not need to be long. A short note is enough. It tells you what was done to the computer, so you do not have to remember it.

Computers change all the time. New programs come in, updates arrive, and problems get fixed. After a few weeks, nobody remembers what changed and when. That is a problem when something breaks, because you have to guess.

The book's point is simple. When you document your work, it becomes easier to manage the system and to troubleshoot it later. Troubleshoot means to find the cause of a problem and fix it. Your notes give you clues. They show what was installed, what was fixed and what was updated. So you can find the cause faster.

There is a second meaning of "logs" in this unit. In the chapter summary, the book reminds you that Windows has a tool called Event Viewer.

So there are two kinds of records. One kind is the notes that you write about your own work. The other kind is the logs that Windows writes by itself, about errors, warnings and other events. Both help you understand what happened to a computer.