Q: Windows Event Viewer is slow on newer versions of Windows The modern Event Viewer application that you get on all versions of Windows since Vista is so much slower the previous version that was on Server 2003 and XP. I know there is much more functionality in the newer version but most of the time I just want to quickly scan the various different event logs as quickly as possible. How can I get the the old version back?

A: 
I just want to quickly scan the various different event logs as quickly as possible.


Quickly scan Event Viewer you say... how about PowerShell:
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{logname='system'; level=2; StartTime=(Get-Date).date}

This will immediately return all Error events from the System log that occurred this day. 
Want to look two days back? 
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{logname='system'; level=2; StartTime=(Get-Date).AddDays(-1).date}

How about just the Information Events generated by Outlook from the Application log?
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{logname='application'; level=4; ProviderName="Outlook"; StartTime=(Get-Date).date}

Pretty hard to beat that.

A: Helge Klein has a great blog post showing how to do add the earliar version of the MMC snapin back - How to Get Back Windows XP's Fast Event Viewer in Windows 7.
Basically you have to run the command 

regsvr32 els.dll

from an elevated privilege command prompt and it will then show up as an MMC snapin called Classic Event Viewer. I'm very happy to have found my cheese :-)
