Question

When there is a GUI program not behaving as I expect it to in Linux I run it from the terminal so that I can see what errors are happening in the background, this helps in configuring the system and figuring out dependencies when the problem is not from the program but rather the system. This is especially helpful when the program doesn’t give any feedback to the user in the GUI.

Is there a way to do the same thing in Windows?

Answer 1

In general, Windows programs are much less well defined in how they run, and there tends to be a much wider variety in the quality of the application, especially in regards to logging and debugging.

Most (all?) windows applications can be run from the command line. You just have to find where the executable is located, and then run it. Looking at the path in an application shortcut can be helpful for this.

Some applications have command line switches that do various things, but many don’t. If there is documentation for the particular program, you may want to check there.

Some well behaved windows programs will log to the System log. Depending on your access level and the version of Windows you are running, the System log can give you some good information about things that might be going wrong with the program, such as file permissions, etc.

In general, however, no, there is no way to get error output from a program if it doesn’t already output it.