Diagnose Problems with a Clean Boot

This week, I wanna start a weekly article to help with frustrated p.c. users who need a little help. If you have any idea's for articles, please leave a comment or email me.

Thanks, Chris...

This weeks article:

Let's say you have an application that is acting funny. Like, so funny that it is unusable. This can be frustrating, especially if it is a game you payed fifty bucks for, only for you to bring it home and it isn't working. This exact scenario has happened to yours truly on many occasions, so I figured a way to diagnose the problem.

A Clean Boot.

First, what it is. A Clean Boot, as the name implies, is when you boot up "clean" as in, no background applications. Usually, a problem with a program not running is due to an issue with a background application. Certain programs can interfere with each other, causing the application your trying to run to not work properly.

Step one is to boot cleanly. To do this, go to "run" in the start menu and type MSCONFIG in the dialogue box that appears. This should pull up the System Configuration Utility, which is a handy windows program that can tweak certain aspects of the system. Once you're in the S.C.U. then go to the "Services" tab. At this point, you should see a list of services with "checks" beside them. Click on the box at the bottom of the window titled "Hide all Microsoft services". Believe me, you don't want to be messing with those too much. Now, after you have hidden all Microsoft services, you should click the "Disable All" button to turn off all non-essential services, then hit okay. It will reboot, and the S.C.U will appear again. When it does, click cancel. We will deal with it some more in a minute.

After your clean boot, try your problematic application. If everything worked properly, then you have an issue with a background program. Congratulations! You have completed step one!

Next, you need to go into MSCONFIG once more and turn on half of the services you previously disabled, then reboot. If the program works again, then that half wasn't the problem. Keep going with the enabling the services until that problem comes back. Once it does, then you have narrowed it down to one or two services. Now you need to decide if those services are necessary. If they are not, then leave them unchecked. If they are important, then you have to figure out the problem between your applications.

The best place to go for this is Google and the forums for both of the companies that makes your programs. Finding the cure is the trickiest part, and will require some research, but I believe in you!

If anything, at least now you know why the program isn't working. Hope that helps!