Finding Events around A Date

by Mar 10, 2014

Often, you might want to browse all system events around a given date. Let's say a machine crashed at 08:47, and you'd like to see all events +/− 2 minutes around that time.

Here is a script that does It for you:

$deltaminutes = 2
$delta = New-TimeSpan -Minutes $deltaminutes

$time = Read-Host -Prompt 'Enter time of event (yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss or HH:mm)'

$datetime = Get-Date -Date $time
$start = $datetime - $delta
$end = $datetime + $delta



$result = @(Get-EventLog -LogName System -Before $end -After $start)
$result += Get-EventLog -LogName Application -Before $end -After $start 

$result | Sort-Object -Property TimeGenerated -Descending |
  Out-GridView -Title "Events +/− $deltaminutes minutes around $datetime" 


When you run it, it asks for a time or a date and time. Next, you get back all events that occurred within 2 minutes before and after in the system and application log.

If you do not get back anything, then there were no events in the given time frame.

The code illustrates how you can get events within a given time frame, and it illustrates how you can query multiple event logs.

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