Hal's Hardware Haven
~~by Hal
Cardona, PC Sleuth
How To Troubleshoot Your PC
Part II
This month, we are looking at software and driver
errors that can keep your PC from working correctly. If you followed
last month's article, your PC should
be booting to the Windows splash screen or beyond.
The first thing to do is delete all the files in you
temp folder (C:\Windows\Temp or C:\Winnt\Temp). Run scandisk from Safe Mode
(Start à Run
à Scandisk) or DOS (at the c:\
type in scandisk and press enter).
If you are getting to the Windows boot screen but your
PC is not booting all the way to desktop, try booting into safe mode. If
you can boot into Safe Mode then your problem is with a driver or a piece of
software loading at boot. If you are running Windows ME or XP now is
perfect time to use System Restore to restore your PC to a time before the
problem occurred.
If you are running Windows 98 or higher press Start
then run and type in msconfig and press enter.
On the general tab start by disabling both your
autoexec.bat and your config.sys, try rebooting, if you are successful then
it is something in of those pre-Windows boot files, you can re-enable them
and disable all the lines in each file and then re-enable each line one a
time to find the offending one.
Now lets check for programs loading at start-up in
Windows. Restart msconfig and go to the tab labeled Start-up and remove the
check marks from everything there and try to restart your PC. If you boot
normally then it is some thing in the Start-up Group that is the problem.
Try enabling them one at a time with a reboot in between until you find the
culprit. Another place Windows loads things at start-up is in the win.ini
file (which you can also check with msconfig), check for any entry in the
load= and the run= lines in the top section, again try disabling them as we
did in the Start-up Tab.
To find out if it is a hardware driver that is causing
your problem, open the Device Manager (in Windows 9X right click on My
Computer and select Properties then the Device Manager tab, in Windows 2K
and XP right click on My Computer and select Manage then the Device Manager
on the left hand side). Once you have the Device Manager open, examine it
carefully for anything with a Red X or Yellow Exclamation Mark, these are
Window’s indicators that it is having a problem with a driver or piece of
hardware. If you see them, try reloading the drivers for the offending
device. If after reloading the driver the error is still there, try
locating the latest drivers for your device and loading them. If you still
have errors go back to my first article on troubleshooting and start again.
If you don’t see any signs of problems in the Device
Manager, try disabling the hardware items listed one at a time and rebooting
to see if the problem goes away hint: disable them, don’t remove them. If
you find the offending piece try reloading the driver or downloading and
installing the latest drivers from the Internet.
You may find that loading the latest drivers for your
hardware doesn’t help; at that point it is time to look for Readmes, FAQs
(Frequently Asked Questions) and user forums related to the hardware. You
are looking for known issues with the hardware that apply to your particular
PC configuration.
By now you should have eliminated hardware from your
troubleshooting. So let’s move on to software and Windows errors.
If you have a screen popping up during the Windows boot
process that states the following driver or software can’t load, you need to
write down what it is that isn’t loading. The easiest way to correct this
type of error is to reinstall the software or driver that needs the file.
There are a few places that Windows uses load files during boot, again
msconfig is a great resource, look in the start-up tab, the win.ini file and
system.ini file for the offender and remove it from the boot process.
Another good tool is the System File Checker (SFC,
Start à Run
à SFC) which is available in
Windows 98SE, ME and XP. SFC checks important Windows files to see if they
are corrupted or have been changed, you can also use it to restore a
corrupted file if you know which file you need to replace.
If you can’t locate it there then it is time to search
the registry. Do this by using regedit (Start à Run
à Regedit), the Registry
Editor. Read Vic’s article on how to back-up the
registry before you start playing around in here, because it is possible
to make Windows unbootable if you make a mistake editing the registry. The
registry editor has a search function under Edit>Find, which you can use to locate the
offending item mentioned in the Windows boot error, and delete it. If you
made things worse, use Vic’s article to restore the registry with the
back-up you made.
Another big help is to reload Windows on top of itself,
it is much easier than a clean install and often can correct small,
hard-to-find problems.
In most cases you should have found the problem by
now. If you haven’t solved your problem, try using the resources below for
additional information or call in a professional. Troubleshooting a PC is
like being a detective, I have shown you some the places to find clues, some
of the tools we use to correct them and some the tools we use to evaluate
those clues. Practice troubleshooting is probably the best way to learn.
Resources:
Troubleshooting PC problems is a step by step process
that can require a lot of research. Some of the places I look for
information are:
- Readme files are usually text files that come with
the hardware (or software) on the CD or diskette. You might also find them
on the manufacturer’s website. They cover known issues with the hardware
or a driver that were discovered after the manual was written. Now is the
time to read them if you haven’t.
- FAQs are lists of commonly asked questions, and are
great trouble shooting resource. You may learn that your problem is a
common one with an easy, but obscure, fix.
- User Forums are online self help sites that may or
may not be monitored or supported by the manufacturer. Before you post a
question in a User Forum read some of the questions and answers first. You
may find your answer, but you will learn the something about the etiquette
of the forum. You can find forums at manufacturer’s web sites, Yahoo
Groups, Freelists, Usenet News groups, and many more places.
- Some of my favorite user forums are:
- Microsoft’s Knowledge Base is a great resource that
talks about problems and issues with all Microsoft products. They have a
relatively easy way to search it. If you are using the knowledge base and
not finding an answer to your problem, try searching a different way.
- Google is an easy to use search engine that I use to
locate manufacture’s websites, User Forums and drivers on the Internet.
Hopefully you found this helpful and not too geeky. As
always, comments and requests for future articles are welcome. E-mail me at abcomputers@pcsleuth.com. If you need free help and support try the
User Forums mentioned earlier in the article. Have fun and see you next month.
Hal
Cardona, PC Sleuth,
serves as tech support and/or offsite Sys Admin for over 200 clients
around the US. He designs, builds, and troubleshoots networks and
builds custom computer systems.
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