CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [298]
Start Windows Normally (All Versions) This choice will simply start Windows normally, without rebooting. You already rebooted to get to this menu. Select this if you changed your mind about using any of the other exotic choices.
Reboot (All Versions) This choice will actually do a soft reboot of the computer.
Return to OS Choices Menu (All Versions) On computers with multiple operating systems, you get an OS Choices menu to select which OS to load. If you load Windows and press F8 to get the Advanced Startup Options menu, you’ll see this option. Choosing it returns you to the OS Choices menu, from which you can select the operating system to load.
Troubleshooting Tools in the GUI
Once you’re able to load into Windows, whether through Safe Mode or one of the other options, the whole gamut of Windows tools is available for you. If a bad device driver caused the startup problems, for example, you can open Device Manager and begin troubleshooting just as you’ve learned in previous chapters. If you suspect some service or Registry issue caused the problem, head on over to Event Viewer and see what sort of logon events have happened recently.
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NOTE Chapter 26, “Securing Computers,” goes into a lot more detail on using Event Viewer, especially auditing, a way to troubleshoot a buggy system.
Event Viewer might reveal problems with applications failing to load, a big cause of Windows loading problems (Figure 17-59). It might also reveal problems with services failing to start. Finally, Windows might run into problems loading DLLs (dynamic link library). You can troubleshoot these issues individually or you can use System Restore in Windows XP to load a restore point that predates the bugginess.
Figure 17-59 Event Viewer showing some serious application errors!
Autoloading Programs
Windows loves to autoload programs so they start at boot. Most of the time this is an incredibly handy option, used by every Windows PC in existence. The problem with autoloading programs is that when one of them starts behaving badly, you need to shut off that program! Use the System Configuration utility to stop programs from autoloading.
Services
Windows loads a number of services as it starts. Windows will not report all service failures at this point. If a service that is less than critical in Windows’ eyes doesn’t start, Windows usually waits until you actually try to use a program that needs that service before it prompts you with an error message (Figure 17-60). Many services require other services, called dependency services, to start before they can run.
Figure 17-60 Service error
To work with your system’s services, go to the Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services and verify that the service you need is running. If not, turn it on. Also notice that each service has a Startup Type—Automatic, Manual, or Disabled—that defines when it starts. It’s very common to find that a service has been set to Manual when it needs to be set to Automatic so that it starts when Windows boots (Figure 17-61).
Figure 17-61 Autostarting a service
System Files
Windows lives on dynamic link library (DLL) files. Almost every program used by Windows—and certainly all of the important ones—call to DLL files to do most of the heavy lifting that makes Windows work. Windows protects all of the critical DLL files very carefully, but once in a while you may get an error saying Windows can’t load a particular DLL. Although rare, the core system files that make up Windows itself may become corrupted, preventing Windows from starting properly. You usually see something like “Error loading XXXX.DLL,” or sometimes a program you need simply won’t start when you double-click its icon. In these cases, the tool you need is the System File Checker. The