I say this ALL THE TIME.
"Did you check your system logs?"
I'm the tech guy that everyone calls, and 90% of the time, the OS system logs can point you in the right direction when you are having problems.
For example, couldn't get Thief 2 to run. Checked logs and ffdshow is the faulting module. Found out I need the indeo codec in no time.
Without knowing about ffdshow, I'd have to sift through tons of "Rebooting fixed it for me", or "I ran it as admin and it fixed it", or "Running in compatibility mode fixes it", or any other number of common things that just waste your time.
Moral - use your damn logs.