Most likely, you have experienced the scenario that your monitoring software or your own customize monitoring alerted you that SQL Server had restarted and you wish to find out the reasons on why it was restarted. You looked into the SQL Server Error Logs, but no details on the restarts. You wanted to look into the Event Viewer to find more details. It contains the Application, Internet Explorer, Security, and System sections. Each one of them has hundreds to thousands of entries. Mindboggling! What should you do? You can try to filter the System event logs on the “Event source” by the category of “USER32” to get started.
Steps:
1. Browse to “Computer Management,” under “System Tools” expand the “Event Viewer” main folder.
2. Right-click on “System” and then select “Properties.”
3. On the “System Properties” dialog box, click on the “Filter” tab.
4. On the “Event source:” drop-down box, select “USER32” and then click on the “OK” button:
5. Click on the most recent entry of the event on the result set to view the description of the reboot and the timestamp along with other relevant details: