When Things Go Wrong
Posted on January 17, 2007
Filed Under Software, Windows |
Like it or not, one day your computer is going to fail you. It will get too hot and blow a gasket, the hard drive will spin itself into oblivion, or Windows will get Alzheimer’s and forget how to function properly. It’s only a matter of time.
Often computers that meet such a fate can be fixed, but the difficulty can be determining exactly what is wrong. The physical line between hardware and software is clear, if you can touch it, its hardware. When it comes to troubleshooting problems however, it can be very unclear whether Windows or hardware has taken a dive.
To make matters worse, what may have started out as a hardware problem may also damage software making the troubleshooting process that much worse. This is particularly true of memory or hard drive problems that can corrupt vital operating system files.
Major culprits that can cause no end of problems are device drivers. A device driver is software that acts as a translator between other software and a hardware device like a printer, scanner, sound card, video card, whatever. A poorly written device driver can cause the device to misunderstand instructions sent to it (or responses it’s sent) and bring the entire system to a screeching halt.
So where do you start to determine what’s gone wrong? Always ask yourself the proverbial question, what’s recently changed? Have you added new hardware, installed new software, plugged into a different power source? It’s amazing how often someone will be sure that nothing has changed and then will slap their forehead when they realize that new music downloading program was the culprit all along.
The next step is straightforward — does Windows start at all? If you’re experiencing problems where the computer won’t start and you don’t see “Starting Windows…” you almost certainly have a hardware problem.
If Windows won’t start but you do see “Starting Windows…” try starting in Safe Mode. Safe Mode starts the computer with only a minimal set of drivers and you can get to Safe Mode by pressing F8 as soon as you see “Starting Windows…”
Being able to start in Safe Mode suggests that a device driver or other software is the problem but there is still a possibility that hardware may be acting up.
If you can’t start in Safe Mode, or you don’t see “Starting Windows…” the Ultimate Boot CD (www.ultimatebootcd.com) may just be your savior. Download the CD image on another computer and burn it to a CD. You can now use the CD you burned to start the misbehaving computer by bypassing Windows (and the hard drive) altogether.
The Ultimate Boot CD comes with a large number of utilities and diagnostics to help identify what might be causing your trouble. The menu is text based but it is easy to navigate. The tools on the CD are also all free as is the Ultimate Boot CD itself! I keep a copy with me at all times.
Although more difficult to create, the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (http://www.ubcd4win.com) can help solve problems that are more Windows or device driver related. The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows includes tools to test memory, the hard drive, and other hardware as well as tools to fix the registry, remove viruses and malware, and work directly with the files on your computer you might otherwise not be able to access. The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is also free software.
These are only a few tips to help fix a computer that won’t start up or will only start in Safe Mode. In the next column we’ll look at problems that cause Blue Screens of Death (I kid you not) or other more insidious gremlins.
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