This chapter provides background information about how to troubleshoot and resolve the most common errors that you may encounter when using Microsoft SQL Server. If you encounter a problem while running SQL Server, first check the error log for entries that might help identify the cause.
How you start SQL Server determines where SQL Server events are logged:
The SQL Server error log contains only SQL Server messages; the Windows NT event log contains messages for all activities on the computer. Both logs include informational messages (such as startup data), and both automatically record the date and time of all events.
The default is to use both the Windows NT event logging service and the SQL Server error log. However, you can set certain installation options to log SQL Server events to only one log.
Note References to the error log refer to the specific error log that you are using.