System Configuration Utility (msconfig)

This Microsoft update will add a Tools tab to the System Configuration Utility (msconfig). The Tools tab will allow further diagnostic tools to be launched from within the System Configuration Utility. It will allow you to perform many administrative/troubleshooting tasks from one location. It includes such utilities as checking your IP address settings with ipconfig, running network diagnostics and viewing your computer’s hardware and software configuration.


Go to the Microsoft website and download the utility

www.microsoft.com

PC Troubleshooting using MSconfig

Starting with Windows 98 Microsoft added a feature that allows you to control what starts with your computer every time you boot up. It comes in very handy to help troubleshoot PC problems. But you need to be careful not to disable something you may need because then you can cause even more problems! There are several ways to access this utility but the quickest way is to go to Start, then Run and type in msconfig and click OK. It will then bring up a window which looks like the following.

You will then want to click on the Startup tab to display the items that are checked to start up with your system. Your system will most likely have different items than shown so don’t worry if it doesn’t look the same.

You can see that the first column contains the name for the startup item. Most of the time this is enough to tell you what the item is.

The second column shows the path to where the file is located. You can use this to get a better idea of what the startup item might be. For example, the third item named VPTray doesn’t really tell you what it is but if you look at the command column you can see that there is the word Symantec in there which tells you it has something to do with your antivirus program and should probably be left alone.

The third column named Location shows where the item is listed in the registry in case you get really daring and want to get rid of it that way although I advise against it.

You may also want to look at the services tab to see what services are set to startup with your computer. This may come in handy especially for fighting viruses. Many viruses like to create a service that starts up with each reboot.

Data Execution Prevention Error Message

When you run a program in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) you may receive an error message that is similar to the following:

Data Execution Prevention – Microsoft Windows
To help protect your computer, Windows has closed this program.
Name: program name
Publisher: program publisher

This is most likely occurring because you are using the Data Execution Prevention feature of Windows XP. You may get this error if the program you are using is not compatible with Data Execution Prevention

Data Execution Prevention (DEP) helps prevent damage from viruses and other security threats that attack by running (executing) malicious code from memory locations that only Windows and other programs should use. This type of threat causes damage by taking over one or more memory locations in use by a program.

Resolution 1
1. When you receive the error message that is mentioned in the "Symptoms" section, click Change Settings.
2. Click to select the check box next to the program, and then click Apply.
3. When you are prompted to restart your computer, click OK two times, and then restart your system.

Resolution 2
1. Right click My Computer and select Properties
2. Click the Advanced tab, then click Performance, and then Settings.
3. In Performance Options, click the Data Execution Prevention tab, and then click Add. To enable the Add button you may have to check the radio button that says Turn on DEP for all programs and services except for those I select.
4. In the Open dialog box, locate and then click the program.
5. Click Open, click Apply, and then click OK.
6. Click Ok to restart your computer.

Increasing Disk Performance

1. Go to Start \ Settings \ Control Panel \ System \ Performance \ File System \ Troubleshooting

2. Check the box Disable synchronous buffer commits.

Computer Memory Troubleshooting

* First if the computer has a memory expansion board, determine if the faulty chip is on the memory board or the motherboard. If the parity error came up during the RAM check it will stop at the number at which the faulty chip is located

* If the fault is with the memory card hopefully a RAM chip testing program will have come with the card when you purchased it. This program will locate and often display graphically where the faulty chip is. If you don’t have such a program use the same procedure as outline on the succeeding notes.

*It is hard to track down the exact chip which is bad on the motherboard because each BIOS (which sends the error message) for the clone uses a different error message coding. Finding the faulty chip can be a radius task

• Take out all memory cards.

• Try pressing down on all the RAM chips on the motherboard, sometimes corrosion will affect the contacts and cause the parity error. Pressing down on the chips helps, seat the chips and improve the connections.

*Take out the last bank of chips and change the DIP switches to check any changes in the amount of memory installed.

• Do you still have a parity error? If not you know that the bad chip is one or more of those nine installed chips. Replace it one at a time with the nine chips that you just removed. Turn on the computer after installing each chip to see if a parity error pops up. If it does, you know you have found the bad chip Replace any bad chip’s) with new one’s).

How to Troubleshoot the Hard Drive

The hard drive will not boot up when you turn on the Computer, or the hard drive makes unusual noise.

Try booting off drive A and then see if you can access the drive.

If it is accessible this means the track zero is bad and the drive needs to be reformatted. It could also mean that the boot up files are corrupted,. in this case recopy the DOS hidden files onto the hard drive with SYS command (i e.COPY.SYS C:) and then copy the COMMAND. COM file to the hard drive if that doesn’t work, back up all the data on the drive and reformat the drive. Open the computer and check that no cables have come loose between the drive and hard disk controller.

If the hard drive is totally inaccessible you can try reformatting it. This will cause all data to be lost. If you have valuable data on the drive you can take it to service center that specializes in hard drives arid they may able to save some of the data. .

If the computer drive will not reformat try the drive on another computer with the same drive. Still will not work? Replace the drive with a functioning one.

Try another one of the same type of controllers on your computer. If the drive works, replace the faulty controller

How To Troubleshoot Your PC

We are looking at software and driver errors that can keep your PC from working correctly.

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.

HARD DISK TROUBLESHOOTING

The drive does not spin up and the drive light doesn't illuminate during power-up.

Make sure the hard drive power connector and ribbon cable are connected.
Swap the hard drive.
You see drive activity, but the computer will not boot from the hard drive.
Make sure that the hard drive power connector and ribbon cable are connected.
Run the BIOS setup program and make sure the drive and the controller are enabled. Also, make sure the drive has the correct parameters; most likely you can try the auto detect feature.

For IDE drives, check the jumper settings of all of the IDE devices, especially the master, slave or stand-alone jumpers.
For SCSI drives, check the jumper settings of all SCSI devices. Make sure the primary hard disk is set to SCSI ID 0. Check during POST to see if the SCSI BIOS is loading and finding any SCSI devices. If not, check the host adapter installation including IRQ, DMA and I/O settings.

Make sure all device drivers have been installed correctly.
Swap the controller card, cable and hard drive, one at a time.
If the drive spins up, but the system fails to recognize the drive. Or if there is a "No Fixed Disk Present" or "Error reading fixed disk" error message on the monitor. Or if the following error messages indicate the computer cannot find an operating

system to boot:
Non-System disk or disk error, Replace and strike any key when ready
No ROM Basic
Disk Boot Error, Replace and Strike Key to Retry
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
BOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR, Please insert another disk
If you are trying to boot from the hard drive, make sure there is no disk in drive A.

If you are trying to boot from the floppy disk drive, try to boot from the hard drive and try to access the floppy disk. Then try to make sure that the disk has the necessary boot files and that the necessary boot files are not corrupt.
If you are trying to boot from the floppy disk drive, try to boot from another bootable floppy disk.

PC Hardware Troubleshooting Tools

Due to the low cost of the some of the hardware components, it’s usually not advisable to repair the IC level problems of the components, instead they should be replaced. The repair cost of the component will most likely be high as compared to the actual cost of the component. There are some very excellent hardware problem detection tools that are very helpful in identifying and isolating the problems. These tools included Multi meter, Cable Tester, POST card and software diagnostic disk.

Configuration Error Messages ( Meanings)

Press F1 to continue Invalid configuration
CMOS time and date not set CMOS battery error
CMOS memory size mismatches System configuration and setup failure
CMOS system option not set CMOS battery failure or CMOS checksum

After the beep tones occur during the startup process, the system now looks and loads the operating system. The errors that occur between the beeps and initializing the operating system can be categorized into the following categories.

• Hardware failure ( due to the physical problem with the booting drive)
• General Failure Error Reading Drive x
• Bad or Missing Command Interpreter
• Non system Disk or Disk Error
• Bad File Allocation Table
• Corrupted or missing operating system files
• Corrupted or missing boot files

The configuration or boot up problems can be occurred to the hardware or operational function’s failure and if the configuration is correct and these error appears this means there is some problems in the hardware and boot up problems are normally linked with the operating system.

Common PC Error Messages

Fatal exception error
Fatal exception errors are codes that are returned by a program in the following cases:
• Access to an illegal instruction has been encountered
• Invalid data or code has been accessed
• The privilege level of an operation is invalid
When any of these cases occurs, the processor returns an exception to the operating system, which in turn is handled as a fatal exception error. In many cases the exception is non-recoverable and the system must either be restarted or shut down, depending upon the severity of the error.

Illegal operation error
An application has experienced instability due to some type of error. This could also be caused by some other application interacting with the error producing program.

Registry/configuration error Choose Command prompt only and run scan reg.
To restore the registry Windows 98:
1. Click Start and then click Shut Down.
2. Click Restart in MS-DOS mode, and then click Yes.
3. At the Ms-Dos prompt type scanreg/restore

Not enough memory to render page
This error appears when a document you sent to the printer is too big for the printer’s buffer memory.

Data Error Reading/Writing Drive C (or other drive)
The error messages given indicate hard drive failure or serious data corruption
This error can be caused by:
Hard drive not setup properly in CMOS.
Hard drive not connected.
Bad hard drive.

This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor
Some type of software tried to communicate with the computer’s CPU, which didn’t understand the request or the request was an invalid action.

There is not enough free memory to run this program. Quit one or more programs, and then try again
You do not have enough memory (RAM) to run all the programs you want to open

There was an internal error, and one of the windows you were using will be closed. It is recommended that you save your work, close all programs, and then restart your computer
You most often see this when you open several windows from the same application, such as many open browser windows or several text documents running in separate windows. When one of the open windows experiences errors and crashes, this message pops up

Invalid system disk Replace the disk, and then press any key
That message means that your hard drive is no longer bootable. Likely causes are a defective drive, corrupted files, or a virus.

Not enough memory to render page
The printer driver may have determined the amount of printer memory incorrectly. This behavior can also occur if the printer does not have enough memory to render the page.

Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
This behavior can occur if there is incompatible hardware or an incompatible device driver on your computer. Try and restore your configuration using the Last Known Good Configuration option from Safe Mode. Remove any newly installed hardware.

Invalid Page Fault
An unexpected event has occurred in Windows.
A program has requested data that is not currently in virtual memory, and Windows attempts to retrieve the data from a storage device and load it into RAM.
An invalid page fault error message can occur when Windows cannot locate the data.
The virtual memory system has become unstable because of a shortage of RAM or hard drive space.
A program is attempting to access data that is being modified by another program that is running.

Windows Protection Error
This behavior can occur when a when your computer loads or unloads a virtual device driver (VxD)

Non-system disk or disk error. Replace and press any key when ready
You may see this message if your start device/disk (floppy disk drive, hard disk drive, or CD-ROM drive) does not contain boot files

Fatal error: An error has been encountered that prevents setup from continuing.
One of the components that Windows needs to continue setup could not be installed.
You may see this message if your hard disk is damaged or corrupted. You receive the error messages because the Setup program is trying to repair the problem on your hard disk.

System has recovered from a serious error
This problem occurs because after a Minidump file is written, the paging file continues to have a flag set that indicates that a Minidump file must be written.

The system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file
This issue may occur if there is not sufficient memory on the computer, and when the current virtual memory settings are not set high enough.

This application requires the Windows Installer to run
The Windows Installer is missing or damaged.

Internet Explorer. A runtime error has occurred. Do you wish to debug
Internet Explorer is displaying this message because it has encountered this error when trying to run some JavaScript on the page.
This message may appear when the Visual InterDev PageNavbar control tries to open a Web page whose name contains an apostrophe (').

Computer Performance Tips

In this article I will clearly spell out the most effective steps you can take in order to increase the performance of your computer and enhance your computing experience.More Memory (RAM)If your computer has less then 256 MB of memory you may want to consider adding more. If you don’t know how much memory you have: right click my computer, go to properties and look towards the bottom of the dialog box.Memory is where the computer stores open files or programs in order to give the processor quick access. To put it simply more memory means more speed and stability. You can buy memory online or visit your local Best Buy where they can install it for you if you don’t feel comfortable doing it yourself.

Computer reboots by itself

Possible causes

* Virus issue such as the Blaster worm

* Bad power supply

* Overheating

* Software or operating system related issue

Using Windows XP System Restore

The System Restore feature of Windows XP is used to return your computer to an earlier saved state without loosing any data files if you have system problems or other failures with your computer. System Restore will take an image of your computer at a given place in time and save it as a restore point. System Restore will take these images or snapshots at times before system changes are made to your computer such as program installations and updates. These snapshots are done without user intervention. You can also create a restore point manually if you feel the need.

To use System Restore you will need at least 200 MB of free hard drive space on your computer which shouldn’t be a problem with today’s large hard drives. You can increase this limit to stay on the safe side by right clicking My Computer, selecting Properties and then click on the System Restore tab. You can also turn off System Restore from here if you need to.

To create a manual System Restore point, click on Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools then System Restore. Then you would click on Create a restore point and click Next. Next give it a descriptive name. Windows will automatically add the time and date. Finally click on Create.

To restore from a previous restore point you would click on Restore my computer to an earlier time instead of Create a restore point. Click on Next and you will be presented with a calendar view of your available restore points.



After you click on Next again you will see a message telling you that Windows will need to shut down your computer and that you should close any open programs. It also tells you that you will not loose any documents you have worked on since the restore date. At this point your computer will shut down and Windows will do its thing. After its complete you can review the stability of your system andif it looks good then you are ready for work. If not you can choose another restore point or undo the restoration.

Computer Monitor troubleshooting steps

Consider now your computer works properly. But the monitor has a problem. The monitor problems irritate us while we want to get things done fast. Follow these steps to troubleshoot your monitor.


1. First of all check if the power supply to the monitor is ON. In old type of computers the power supply is given in the CPU but in recent computers the monitors have own power cable.. Check if it is fixed correct and If the switch is on. If the power supply comes to the monitor the LED will glow in the monitor. Otherwise it does not glow.

2. After that you have a switch control in monitor for adjusting the monitor setting. You can adjust to get display. Children may change the settings mistakenly. We can check it out.

3. After that check whether video cable is connected to the CPU firmly.

4. If you have any other monitor you can connect with CPU by using the same video cable and also the problem continuous that means the video cable has a problem.

5. If you can connect your monitor with another CPU then we decide the problem is in your monitor. You have to change your monitor or repair the monitor by the technician.

6. When booting the computer the monitor that is identified maybe incorrect then we decide the problems in your display card. Try to change the monitor driver if you have the CD. Or change the video card.

After fixing new display card, if the problem continues then change your monitor. Don’t buy a second hand monitor. Buy a monitor based on new technology releases when you buy a new monitor. Recently the flat LCD monitors are cheep.