Somewhere along the journey of beta cycles Dan Winter made me realize how important the logs in the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\LOGS directory was.  In that case we were dealing with a setup issue and we were looking for the PSCDiagnostics*.log files.  However, I didn’t associate that directory with logging for the entire product.  So when I started struggling with workflows (see my two previous posts: Adding the second workflow to a SharePoint Workflow Assembly and Renaming the Default Workflow with the ECM Starter Kit B2TR) I didn’t connect that the unified logging service would have the answers I needed.  However, Todd Baginski was kind enough to remind me that these logs actually contained everything SharePoint in them.  When I cracked the latest log file open I saw my error.  Of course, that doesn’t resolve the problem — but it at least allows me to work on it.  So, if it’s SharePoint and it’s broken the LOGS directory is a good place to look first.

By the way, if you want to change the interval that the log files are changed or the number of log files that are kept, you can get to that under Central Administration->Operations->Diagnostics Logging.