The Windows Event Log utility in PowerShell is used to manage and interact with Windows Event Logs. It allows you to query, analyze, and export event log data from local or remote computers. This is essential for system monitoring, security auditing, and troubleshooting.

Common Commands for Event Logs

These are the primary PowerShell cmdlets used for managing event logs:

• Get-EventLog: Retrieves the events from event logs.
• Clear-EventLog: Clears the entries in an event log.
• New-EventLog: Creates a new event log on a local or remote computer.
• Remove-EventLog: Deletes an event log.
• Get-WinEvent: Retrieves events from event logs with more flexibility than Get-EventLog.

Examples of PowerShell Commands

# Retrieve the last 10 events from the System log
Get-EventLog -LogName System -Newest 10
 
# Clear the Application event log
Clear-EventLog -LogName Application
 
# Create a new event log on a remote computer
New-EventLog -LogName "CustomLog" -Source "MyApp" -ComputerName "RemotePC"
 
# Query the Windows Security event log for a specific event ID
Get-WinEvent -LogName Security -Id 4624

Key Event Log Categories

Log Type	Description
Application	Logs related to applications and software
Security	Logs security events like login attempts
System	Logs system-related events like hardware issues

Filtering Event Logs

You can filter event logs using parameters such as Event ID, Date, Level, and Source to narrow down the data.

Example of Filtering

# Get all errors from the Application log in the last 24 hours
Get-EventLog -LogName Application -EntryType Error -After (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)

Exporting Event Logs

You can export event log data for further analysis or archiving.

# Export event logs to a CSV file
Get-EventLog -LogName Security | Export-Csv -Path "C:\Logs\SecurityLogs.csv" -NoTypeInformation