Reading an event log
In this recipe, we will read the event log.
How to do it...
Let's take a look at how we can read the Windows event log from PowerShell:
- Open PowerShell ISE as an administrator.
- Add the following script and run it:
Get-EventLog -LogName Application -Newest 20 -EntryType Error
How it works...
Reading the event log is straightforward in PowerShell. We can do this using the Get-EventLog cmdlet. This cmdlet accepts a few switches that includes LogName and EntryType:
Get-EventLog -LogName Application -Newest 20 -EntryType Error
Some of the possible LogName values are follows:
- Application
- HardwareEvents
- Internet Explorer
- Security
- System
- Windows PowerShell
You can alternatively pass the name of a custom log that is available in your system to it.
The EntryType can be of the following types:
- Error
- FailureAudit
- Information
- SuccessAudit
- Warning
In this recipe, we also use the –Newest switch to filter only for the newest 20 error events.
An alternative way of using Get-EventLog is Get-WinEvent...
