Why does it take so long to view logs on a server?
Yes, reading logs takes a long time in the log file viewer. A few things to fix it:

Try using xp_readerrorlog with filtered parameters to get just the data you want:


@p1 is the log file you want to look at (0 is current, 1 is the first archive, 2 is second, etc)
@p2 is null for the error log, 2 for Agent
@p3 and @p4 are strings to search for in the output


That way you just get the rows you want.

If you find yourself doing this kind of thing frequently, run a job to cycle the error log periodically (I like weekly) so that you don't have to sift through so much stuff. Plus, make sure you're not logging successful backups or successful logins to the error log.