What event id to use for my custom event log entries?

Question

Is there any ranges of valid event IDs which should be used by custom applications while logging to Windows EventLog? Or I can use any event ID of my choice (1,2,3,4....). P.S, I am developing in C#.NET.

Answer 1

EventIds are application specific so you can use whatever ranges you like. Just ensure you document what you have used and where so that you can ensure you don't use an id twice, or to facilitate easier debugging.

But keep in mind...

Like when Henry Ford said "you can have any color you want as long as it's black" - you can also use whatever range you like as long as that range falls inside the range of 0 and 65535.

Answer 2

Sure enough, it is up to the author to define and track event IDs they use and what they mean.

Here is a reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e29k5ebc.aspx - Particularly interesting is the part about not writing messages with IPv6 addresses (because of the % character) to the event log. I bet you can use a parameter to work around that though.