A computer system monitoring apparatus that collects various system and operating parameters to a removable memory unit. The system includes an operating system controlling at least one process along with a memory for executing operation instructions and a permanent memory storage coupled to the computer. The system monitors the status of a process within the computer, including the process state and any events that occur to alter the state. The system logs the status data of the process within the computer upon a change in the status of the process, accumulates the status data, and writes the status data to the memory storage in a manner to always maintain the most recent system status information on the memory storage. When a fault in the computer system occurs, the memory unit can be retrieved, and the data thereon is used to troubleshoot the fault.