Under what conditions does the problem occur?

Knowing which systems and applications are running at the time that a problem occurs is an important part of troubleshooting.

These questions about your environment can help you to identify the root cause of the problem:

Does the problem always occur when the same task is being performed?
Does a certain sequence of events need to occur for the problem to surface?
Do any other applications fail at the same time?

Answering these types of questions can help you explain the environment in which the problem occurs and correlate any dependencies. Remember that just because multiple problems might have occurred around the same time, the problems are not necessarily related.