Monday, November 13, 2000		Lead Article

WINDOWS is the most widely used operating system in the world. It is also one of the most user-friendly. It is currently available in Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT and Windows Me versions. Though these operating systems are technically different from each other, the basics remain the same.

Over a period of time these operating systems have been upgraded to suit the requirement of the users. For example, Windows 95 was an advanced version of Windows 3.1. It featured a lot of user-friendly functions as compared to its predecessor. With the Internet becoming popular, the need for further improvements in Windows 95 was felt and it led to the introduction of Windows 98. Later, Windows NT was launched. It took into consideration the very important factor of networking in the operating system. And now it’s Windows 2000 and Me. They have the best of features of all previous versions, besides some modern day features and extensive help that is a major features other than the value- added features that make a modern operating system. In fact, till recently, Windows operating systems were lacking in adequate help and troubleshooting tips to the users. This was the reason that people had problems with their operating system.

Troubleshooting in Windows is thus very important for any user, as a majority of us have faced problems in our Windows operating system sometime or the other. This was primarily because of a lack of adequate information about a problem in the system. There was no inherent problem in the operating system as such. As the first step in troubleshooting in Windows, one must make sure to have a bootable disk of the operating system a person is using. By having a proper bootable disk, you safeguard your computer against crash and also get over at least half of Windows-related problems. So, in your troubleshooting kit, you must always keep the copies of bootable disk ready. They can be made both at the time of installation of Windows or later. This is basically your most important and also the most powerful tool for combating any problem that may arise in the operating system. If you have your bootable disk, you can boot you machine and start the computer in safe mode and you can pinpoint errors. Booting the system in safe mode using a bootable disk has one very important function as running a scandisk can solve a majority of small problems. Thus, you can rectify some basic errors by running Scandisk in safe mode and if the problem does not get solved then you can use some disk utilities for solving your problem. However, if you do not have a bootable disk and, unfortunately, your computer crashes, you can make a bootable disk by logging on to the site www.bootdisk.com. All you need to know to create your bootable disk is the exact version of your Windows operating system. This you can know from the CD and also from the manual supplied with the operating system. This is the first and the basic step in troubleshooting. Now if you come across a problem while working on a computer, it can be logically dealt. As a first step, you must try to pinpoint what exactly is the problem. Here you should not seek general problem that the system is not booting but you must know the specific problem. In the second step, try to find out when it began. Did it happen a day back or a month back? In the third step, try and locate the changes that have taken place in your computer. This is the most critical question and if you are able to answer this question correctly, the chances of correcting the problem will be much higher.

After making sure that these basic steps have been taken, you can initiate troubleshooting. Now, if by going through this process you notice that the problem in your case is related to hanging of the computer, it is advisable to check the bootlog.txt file. This file is installed in Windows along with other files like Detlog.txt and Setuplog.txt during installation to track the installation process. It logs any problem that occurs during the process of installation. Bootlog.txt is actually a hidden ASCII file in the root directory of the hard drive. It is being created as part of the installation process after the first boot after set-up. In the Bootlog.txt file, there are four main classes of events that are logged in the BOOTLOG.TXT: Real-mode driver loading, VxD loading/initialisation, dVxD loading/initialisation and SysCritInit initialisation of VxD’s. Except for the first 10 lines, which mainly contain the critical information about the loading and the status of real mode drivers like HIMEM.SYS, EMM386 and SETVER, the other components of this file can be used to pinpoint the problem of hanging. As this file contains information about the failure and success of drivers, the driver which shows failure in loading can be considered as the trouble point for hanging of the computer. Though this is correct in majority of the cases, in some the failure does not reflect the hanging problem. For troubleshooting in Windows, the best and most effective way is to troubleshoot in safe mode. Since Windows boots in safe mode with a very limited set of drivers, it greatly helps in pinpointing the error. In the safe mode the Autoexec.bat and config.sys files are not loaded. In other potential error areas like the main portion of the Registry, the load= and run= lines in Win.ini, and the (Boot) and (386Enh) sections in system.ini are not loaded. Thus, starting the system in safe mode, it becomes easier to locate the problem loading these files step by step. So, once you have booted the system in the safe mode, first turn hardware acceleration to none, also turn read-ahead to none and then change the video driver to a standard VGA and thus disable your own SVGA driver. Now restart your computer in normal mode. Optionally, you can also restart your computer after carrying individual changes. But since this will take a long time, you can prefer to do it after two or three steps. If the problem persists, restart the computer again and instead of booting in the safe mode, choose step-by-step confirmation from the options you had earlier chosen to boot in safe mode. You can get these options by pressing F8 immediately before Windows starts loading.

Under this option, you will be asked to confirm loading of each and every command. As the first step, load all the commands. Do not load Windows drivers. Press y for all the options to load but press N or No to the option of loading "all windows drivers". This does not load the run= and load= lines in the win.ini, and does not load the (boot) and the (386Enh) sections of the system.ini. If the system boots well, you can pinpoint that the trouble is in your Windows drivers. However, if the system does not boot correctly, you should rename your win.ini in your default Windows directory. Now restart your computer. On restarting the computer a new win.ini file would be created. If the system boots properly, you will know where your problem was. But if it does not boot correctly, you can rename your system.ini file. After renaming the system.ini to with any other extension, type copy system.cb system.ini. System.cb refers to system.cleanboot. This is the file that loads in safe mode. Now again reboot your system and press F8 and choose the option of step-by-step loading of Windows. Except for Autoexec.bat and config.sys files, load all other commands and files in the process of booting. If the system boots, you can pinpoint the problem in Autoexec.bat and Config.sys. Normally, by now you would have been able to pinpoint the trouble and you can solve it by either removing it from the file or reloading it again.

Troubleshooting in Windows, is therefore, a complicated task. But if it is done correctly and by following proper procedure, you can tackle any situation that may arise due to problems in your operating system. However, it is recommended that you should either make a copy of all the files that you are changing or restore these files to their original, which were not found to have trouble in the process discussed earlier. But if you have not dealt with these kinds of problems before or you are new to computers, you should attempt the procedure in the presence of an expert.