Tag: Troubleshooting
November 06, 2008 by
Jason
Just thought I should give the community my top five list for computer troubleshooting!
1. Your computer isn’t turning on? “Oh, no!” You think, “I’d better get a new one!” STOP right there. Before you get too frustrated, be sure you have checked that the power cord is actually plugged into your wall socket properly. You may think it sounds silly, but believe me, it’s more common than you think even for the computer savvy. If your computer is connected through a power board, you should try plugging it directly into the wall (note for the safety conscious: by plugging the power cable
directly into the wall, you lessen the chance of power failure and damage to your machine). Another reason that your PC may not start is if you have made any repairs or modification to your machine. You may have unwittingly pulled out a connect plug; check all connections.
2. If your computer is starting but is spitting error messages at you, then you might need to take out any memory modules such as RAM and then reset them by plugging them back into different RAM slots.If you get an error such as ‘Unexpected Interrupt in Protected Mode,’ then there is a problem with the settings you have entered in BIOS. To fix it go into BIOS and set it to default settings. If the problem still won’t go away, then you must remove the CMOS chip on your motherboard then put it back in to clean BIOS completely. Read More»
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September 21, 2008 by
Jason Normally, the blue screen of death contains a driver name, and some addresses; if you’re lucky, removing that driver will do the trick. But what if there is no driver name on the BSoD? And what if you don’t have all the skills to play with crashdumps and debuggers?
In this case, Autoruns comes to the rescue. This is a graphical tool that allows you to disable/enable drivers in a very easy way.
The strategy:
1. Boot into safe mode (since the system is crashing when you attempt to boot normally);
2. Start Autoruns, and switch to the Drivers tab;
3. Go through the list, and uncheck the drivers that are suspicious;
4. Close the program, restart and boot normally
The steps above will be repeated until the system is able to boot correctly.
When that happens, remember what were the last changes you applied, and try to enable some drivers back – until you figure out which one of them was causing the issue. Read More»
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September 10, 2008 by
Jason Windows Aero is the premium visual experience of Windows Vista. It features a transparent glass design with subtle window animations and new window colors.
Here are some solutions to common problem with running Windows Aero.
Which editions of Windows Vista include Aero?
The following editions include Aero:
Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Ultimate. Aero is not included in Windows XP or earlier versions of Windows.
To find out which edition of Windows Vista you have on your computer, do the following:
Open Welcome Center by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking System and Maintenance, and then clicking Welcome Center.
The edition of Windows Vista you’re running is displayed with your computer details near the top of the window. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
For many Windows users, the thought of using the Command Prompt is either a scary experience or something that they will never need. But for some, the command prompt is a powerful tool that can be far more useful than many graphical tools available in Windows.
Being a System Administrator, I constantly use the command prompt, mostly because I access systems remotely and many tasks can be performed quickly with out the graphics over head (even though connecting via Terminal Server is very convenient).
So if you are an avid user of the command line, here are my top 10 built-in (non third party) command line tools for XP, Vista and WIndows server versions (remember these commands are not your typical tools, such as find, copy, move, dir, etc..).
1 – systeminfo – Have a need to display operating system configuration information for a local or remote machine, including service pack levels? Then systeminfo is the tool to use. When I need to connect to a system that I am not familiar with, this is the first tool I run. Read More»
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
With many innovations being made to today’s PC’s hardware, laptops and desktops have become much smaller and lighter. But one drawback to that light weight convenience is heat.
Computers today can pack more processing power in a much smaller and denser space, if you don’t keep them cool, you can pretty much guarantee a hardware failure will occur.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to keep tabs on hardware temperature using a free utility called CPUID.
HWMonitor from CPUID software is a hardware monitoring program that reads your PC Systems main health sensors, such as voltages, temperatures and fans speed. I mostly use it on my home PC to keeps tabs just on temperature since I use a laptop. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
Windows Sysinternals is a collection of advanced system utilities accompanied by technical information, designed to streamline maintenance, management, diagnosis and troubleshooting tasks under the hood of the Windows operating system. The resources are offered as free downloads by Microsoft since 2006, when the Redmond giant acquired the project put together by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. As of May 28, Microsoft has enabled alternative access to the utilities via Live Sysinternals, which is still in tests.
“We’re excited to announce the beta of Sysinternals Live, a service that enables you to execute Sysinternals tools directly from the Web without hunting for and manually downloading them. Simply enter a tool’s Sysinternals Live path into Windows Explorer or a command prompt as live.sysinternals.comtools or view the entire Sysinternals Live tools directory in a browser,” reads the announcement from Microsoft. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows Vista, Windows XP | No Comments »
Although Microsoft has hammered away at Windows XP SP3 in order to provide an experience as seamless as possible for end users when deploying the service pack, failed installation scenarios are still a valid possibility. In the eventuality of a failed installation of XP SP3 RTM, there are some troubleshooting steps end users can take before running to Microsoft Support for help. The troubleshooting methods involve nothing more than basic actions on the part of the end user and are designed to resolve an unsuccessful installation process while, at the same, time ignoring the error message.
First of all, Microsoft advises all end users to turn to Windows Update for the primary source of the gold bits of XP SP3. “Sometimes an installation is unsuccessful because a previous operation was not completed. By restarting the computer, you close any pending computer functions and restart the process. Wait until the computer finishes the restart process, and then log on to your account. Visit Windows Update to reselect and install Windows XP SP3. Click Express Install (Recommended),” Microsoft stated. Read More»
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February 22, 2008 by
Jason Microsoft constantly collects information about Vista from users. When a problem occurs, Vista usually asks whether you want to send information about the problem to Microsoft and, if you do, it stores these tidbits in a massive database. Engineers then tackle the “issues” (as they euphemistically call them) and hopefully come up with solutions.
One of Vista’s most promising new features is Problem Reports and Solutions, and it’s designed to make solutions available to anyone who goes looking for them. Vista keeps a list of problems your computer is having, so you can tell it to go online and see if a solution is available. If there’s a solution waiting, Vista will download it, install it, and fix your system. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
December 28, 2007 by
Jason 
In Windows Vista, users can have an extensive System Health Report generated for them in helping troubleshoot performance and reliability issues on their PC or to see how healthy their PC is in general. For the average user, this probably won’t mean anything. But for me, I’m the type of user that really likes having the ability to create reports that tell me about my PC so I was really excited to find this ability in Windows Vista.
This evening I decided to generate a report on my main desktop PC for the first time and see what it says. To have a System Health Report generated: Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 2 Comments »
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