Many of the tools from MS sysinternals can prove to be very helpful.
More than others process explorer, autoruns and tcpview I have found to be usefull when trying to figure out what a user has configured.
There are so many others but I have found that getting to know these can give you an amazing amount of info.
I also recently found out about a prog called SIW. It is a stand alone system info prog that is pretty detailed.
Below is a few links concerning reading MS error logs that I am in the process of trying to learn more about.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtoo...g/default.mspx
http://elliottback.com/wp/how-to-ana...inidump-files/
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35246
http://www.ifoundafix.com/2008/02/05...dump-dmp-file/