Get alerts when folders run out of space

What you need: Eventsentry Light; Any Windows version (XP to 10) Time required: 30 minutes

Light is a free Pc-monitoring program that lets you set up email alerts for all kinds of activity on your PC. For example, we’ll explain how to create alerts when your PC’S drives are nearing their storage limit. We’ll also show you how to set up alerts whenever a program is installed or uninstalled, which can help identify if anyone is misusing your PC.

STEP 1 To install Eventsentry Light, go to www.snipca. com/27356, click the blue Download Eventsentry Light button at the bottom, then run the downloaded setup file. When the program opens for the first time, you can set up your email alerts. Tick Enable Email Alerts 1 and set your Email Volume to Medium 2 . At the bottom, you can limit the number of hourly alerts you want to receive 3 . Click Next 4 , tick Eventsentry Alerts and Generic System Alerts, then click Next twice.

STEP 2 Next, set the email address to send 1 and receive 2 alerts (both can be the same). You can receive alerts on multiple email addresses (separate each one with a comma). You’ll need to log into these accounts if you haven’t done so already. Click Next 3 when you’ve finished, untick ‘Enable Heartbeat Monitoring’, then keep clicking Next to finish the setup. When that’s done, tick Launch Management Console, click Finish and close the Eventsentry Online Resources pop-up window.

STEP 3 You’ll now see a window with several dropdown menus on the left. Before setting your alerts, you should test whether your email is set up properly. To do that, click Default Email 1 below Actions on the left. Ensure the sender and recipient email addresses 2 are correct, then click Send Test Email 3 . Click OK 4 on the pop-up message that appears and check the email has arrived. To customise the font in the email alerts, click the Customize button 5 and use the dropdown menus in the Font Options section.

STEP 4 To set alerts warning you your PC’S drives are low on storage space, click the following dropdown menus on the left in this order: Packages, System Health, Disk Space Error, then click Disk Space 1 . By default, the program monitors all drives on your PC 2 . If you want to only monitor specific drives, then select ‘Monitor only selected disk drives’ 3 and choose the relevant drives 4 .

STEP 5 The Limits section at the bottom lets you set parameters for triggering your alert. Tick the first two boxes in the Limits section 1 . By default, you’ll receive an alert whenever your drive’s free space drops to below five per cent or 1GB (you can select one or both). It’s a good idea to set this to a higher value – we recommend 15 per cent 2 or 15GB 3 . Ensure that both the ‘Log as’ dropdown menus are set to Error 4 . Finally, click the Alerts button 5 to set this up as an event log alert.

STEP 6 Here, change the Package dropdown menu to Email Notification 1 , then name your alert 2 . Next, in the Action dropdown menu, select Default Email 3 , tick ‘Trigger all actions’ 4 , then click Next 5 . Name your event log alert on the next page (we named it ‘Disk Space Alert’), then click Finish. To see all your alerts, expand the Packages dropdown menu on the left, click Event Logs, then Eventsentry Alerts. You’ll see options to delete or rename your alerts at the top left of the program.

STEP 7 We’ll now show you how to set up alerts every time a program is installed or uninstalled, and if any installed programs automatically start up with your PC. Click the following dropdown menus on the left in this order: Packages, System Health, Inventory, then Software/hardware Inventory 1 . Here, tick ‘Detect when software is installed or uninstalled’ and ‘Detect programs added to Autorun locations’ 2 . Ensure both the corresponding dropdown menus are set to Error 3 . Finally, click the Alerts button 4 and repeat Step 6 to create your event log alert. For other useful tips and FAQS, click the Home tab 5 , then click Help on the right. ●