Hi Don,

Yes,Dr Watson can be a major disturbance on a computer.
If set to be invoked,it will consume large amounts of resources -CPU and Memory.
It will be started because of a failure of a program or application that causes a 
crash of the program or the system.
It will then gather information to write to a (debug) log.
Settings that affect it are in: System Properties > Advanced tab > Startup and 
Recovery > System failure . If "Write an event to the system log" is ticked,
Dr Watson will start it's debugging mode.
In addition, there is also a Registry entry that will determine the action of Dr 
Watson, see  How to disable Dr. Watson for Windows
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188296

BTW,Dr Watson "lives";) in ..:\WINDOWS\system32\  and ..:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache,
the log is in the WINDOWS folder as well.
It's interesting that you would find it under Documents and Settings.

A lot of people "use" it without even knowing it,because of their settings and wonder
about severe slowdowns.
A check of Task Manager should reveal the running of Dr Watson.

However,it does indicate that some programs or applications do not perform as 
required and those issues should be resolved as well.Check for this in Event Viewer.

Hope this helps.

Peter E.



-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: [PCSOFT] Hard drive full--problem solved
From: Don Penlington <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: 24-Jan-2009 10:59:16 AM

Thx to those who replied.

I ran Scanner on the C-Drive to see what was taking up the space. Turned out that the
log file for Dr Watson, buried deep in Docs and Settings, was about 4 Gb. I've no
idea what use it would be, or why Dr Watson has been so busy.

Presumably it's still running in the background accumulating its deadwood logs again.
How do you disable it?

I deleted it and his computer is now AOK.

Malware and a-v checks come up clean.

Does anyone actually use Dr Watson these days?  I thought he was one of those rather
obsolete and obscure utilities still built into XP as a retro thing, superceded by
newer and better diagnostic utilities.

i must confess I've never used him, wouldn't even know where he lives.

Why would it have built up such a large log file?  Can/should it be uninstalled, or
is it permanently part of XP?

Don Penlington

                         PCSOFT's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>

                         PCSOFT's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>