"drwatson" file

bwaites

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Nov 27, 2003
Messages
5,035
Location
Central Washington State
\"drwatson\" file

I recently had my computer freeze, telling me there was no more hard disk space.

Knowing that I should have plenty of room on my RAID 80 GIG drives, I started sorting through files, only to find a file titled drwatson.txt that was 38 GIGs in size!

drwatson is a fault finding execution program that logs any problems within its parameters when they occur. Over a couple years time, my file had grown quite large! (That happens when you have 4 kids and their friends and significant others using it.)

After a little research, I deleted the file, and voila, a normal computer again.

Maybe you computer gurus can tell us computer newbies if that file should be cleaned periodically?

Bill
 

Empath

Flashaholic
Joined
Nov 11, 2001
Messages
8,508
Location
Oregon
Re: \"drwatson\" file

It's a log file that helps you see where errors are occurring. If you had a log file that big, there's something happening frequently enough to merit tracking it down. Regardless, the absence of logging won't adversely affect performance.

In XP, DrWatson can be turned of through RegEdit, with this toggle.

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug
Name: Auto
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 0 disable
Value: 1 enable


You can toggle it on and off with the values of 1 or 0. With it off, your log file won't grow. With it on, you've got a log file that's meaningful in the right hands.
 
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