There is a version of a black box on every PC or Mac. The Mac version is called Mac console and windows uses event viewer. These programs can and are still recording all sorts of things such as when the computer was started and shut off, if a program failed to load, if a device driver failed to initialize etc. These logs are stored as text files on your hard drive. Trouble is if the computer is dead to have to find a way to get those files to another PC so you can read them.
