How to Use Windows Reliability Monitor to Diagnose Crashes

Reliability Monitor shows exactly when your system became unstable — and correlates crashes with software installations, updates, and hardware events. It's the fastest way to find what broke Windows.

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Open Reliability Monitor

Win + S → search Reliability Monitor

Or: Win + R → perfmon /rel

Or: Control Panel → Security and Maintenance → View reliability history

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Reading the Chart

The chart shows a stability index from 1 (very unstable) to 10 (perfect) plotted over time.

Icons on the timeline:

• 🔴 Red X — critical failure (application crash, Windows error, hardware failure)
• 🟡 Yellow ! — warning (non-critical failure)
• 🔵 Blue i — informational (software installed, updated, or removed)

Click any day to see what happened:

Application failures — programs that crashed or stopped responding Windows failures — OS errors and unexpected reboots Miscellaneous failures — disk errors, boot failures Warnings — driver installation issues Information — successful installations

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Find What Caused a Crash

1. Find the day when problems started (big stability drop)
2. Look at Information entries for that day — what was installed?
3. Cross-reference with Application failures or Windows failures

If stability dropped after installing software → that software likely caused it.

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View Problem Details

Click any red X or yellow ! → View technical details → shows:

• Exact time and date
• Faulting application or module name
• Error code
• Event ID for cross-referencing with Event Viewer

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PowerShell: Get Reliability Data

# Get all critical events from Reliability Monitor data
Get-WinEvent -LogName "Microsoft-Windows-Reliability Analysis Component/Operational" `
  -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
  Where-Object {$_.Level -le 2} |
  Select-Object TimeCreated, Message |
  Select-Object -First 20 | Format-List

# Alternative: System log critical events
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{
  LogName = 'System'
  Level = @(1, 2)  # Critical and Error
  StartTime = (Get-Date).AddDays(-30)
} | Select-Object TimeCreated, ProviderName, Id, Message |
  Sort-Object TimeCreated -Descending |
  Select-Object -First 20

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Check All Recent Problem Events

# Application crashes (Event ID 1000)
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='Application'; Id=1000} -MaxEvents 10 |
  Select-Object TimeCreated,
    @{n='App';e={$_.Properties[0].Value}},
    @{n='Fault Module';e={$_.Properties[4].Value}}

# Unexpected shutdowns (Event ID 41)
Get-WinEvent -FilterHashtable @{LogName='System'; Id=41} -MaxEvents 5 |
  Select-Object TimeCreated, Message

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Save Reliability Report

In Reliability Monitor → Save a reliability history → saves to XML for sharing with IT support.

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Reliability Monitor vs Event Viewer

	Reliability Monitor	Event Viewer
Visual timeline	✅	❌
Easy to read	✅	❌
Full detail	Limited	✅
Filter/search	Basic	Advanced
Best for	Finding when problems started	Finding why

Use Reliability Monitor first to identify the timeframe and event, then switch to Event Viewer for detailed investigation.

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🔍 Не знаєш що означає код помилки Windows?

Якщо Windows показує код на кшталт 0x80070005, 0x80070002 або 0xC000021A — скористайся безкоштовним інструментом:

→ Декодер помилок Windows — введи код і одразу дізнайся що він означає та як виправити.

Summary

Open with perfmon /rel. Look for the day when stability dropped. Check what was installed (blue circles) and what failed (red X) on that day. Click any event for technical details. Use this as the starting point before diving into Event Viewer logs.