Computers are often frustrating beasts, but few
things in computerdom are as hair-pullingly, teeth-gnashingly
frustrating as an operating system that won’t operate. To help save some
wear and tear on your hair and teeth, this section outlines a few
common startup difficulties and their solutions.
When to Use the Various Advanced Startup Options
You saw earlier that
Windows Vista has some useful options on its Advanced Options menu. But
under what circumstances should you use each option? Because there is
some overlap in what each option brings to the table, there are no hard
and fast rules. It is possible, however, to lay down some general
guidelines.
You should use the Safe Mode option if one of the following conditions occurs:
Windows Vista doesn’t start after the POST ends.
Windows Vista seems to stall for an extended period.
You can’t print to a local printer.
Your video display is distorted and possibly unreadable.
Your computer stalls repeatedly.
Your computer suddenly slows down and doesn’t return to normal without a reboot.
You need to test an intermittent error condition.
You should use the Safe Mode with Networking option if one of the following situations occurs:
Windows Vista fails to start using any of the other safe mode options.
The drivers or programs you need to repair a problem exist on a shared network resource.
You need access to email or other network-based communications for technical support.
You need to access the Internet via a network gateway device to download device drivers or visit an online tech support site.
Your computer is running a shared Windows Vista installation.
You should use the Safe Mode with Command Prompt option if one of the following situations occurs:
Windows Vista fails to start using any of the other Safe mode options.
The programs you need to repair a problem must be run from the command prompt.
You can’t load the Windows Vista GUI.
You should use the Enable Boot Logging option in the following situations:
The Windows Vista startup hangs after switching to Protected mode.
You need a detailed record of the startup process.
You
suspect (after using one of the other Startup menu options) that a
Protected-mode driver is causing Windows Vista startup to fail.
After starting (or attempting to start) Windows Vista with this option, you end up with a file named ntbtlog.txt in the %SystemRoot%
folder. This is a text file, so you can examine it with any text
editor. For example, you could boot to the command prompt (using the
Safe Mode with Command Prompt option) and then use Notepad to examine
the file. Move to the end of the file and you might see a message
telling you which device driver failed. You probably need to reinstall
or roll back the driver.
You should use the Enable VGA Mode option in the following situations:
Windows Vista fails to start using any of the Safe mode options.
You
recently installed a new video card device driver and the screen is
garbled or the driver is balking at a resolution or color depth setting
that’s too high.
You can’t load the Windows Vista GUI.
After Windows Vista has
loaded, you can either reinstall or roll back the driver, or you can
adjust the display settings to values that the driver can handle.
Use the Last Known Good Configuration option under the following circumstances:
You suspect the problem is hardware related, but you can’t figure out the driver that’s causing the problem.
You don’t have time to try out the other more detailed inspections.
The Directory Services Restore Mode option is only for domain controllers, so you should never need to use it.
Use the Debugging Mode
option if you receive a stop error during startup and a remote technical
support professional has asked you to send debugging data.
What to Do If Windows Vista Won’t Start in Safe Mode
If Windows Vista is so
intractable that it won’t even start in Safe mode, your system is likely
afflicted with one of the following problems:
Your system is infected with a virus. You need to run an antivirus program to cleanse your system.
Your
system has incorrect CMOS settings. Run the machine’s CMOS setup
program to see whether any of these settings needs to be changed or
whether the CMOS battery needs to be replaced.
Your system has a hardware conflict.
There
is a problem with a SCSI device. In this case, your system might hang
during the SCSI BIOS initialization process. Try removing devices from
the SCSI chain until your system starts normally.
Recovering Using the System Recovery Options
If your system still won’t
start, all is not yet lost. Windows Vista comes with a new feature
called System Recovery Options, a collection to tools available on the
Vista installation disc. The idea is that you boot your computer using
the disc, and then select the recovery tool you want to use. To try this
out, first follow these steps:
1. | Insert your Windows Vista disc and reboot your computer.
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2. | When
you’re prompted to boot from the CD, press the required key (or, in
most cases, any key). The Windows Vista setup program launches and after
it loads a few files, you see the Install Windows screen.
Note
If your system won’t
boot from the Windows Vista disc, you need to adjust the system’s BIOS
settings to allow this. Restart the computer and look for a startup
message that prompts you to press a key or key combination to enter the
system’s BIOS and modify the settings (which might be called Setup or
something similar). Find the boot options and either enable a CD-based
boot or make sure that the option to boot from the CD comes before the
option to boot from the hard disk.
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2. | |
3. | Click Repair Your Computer. The System Recovery Options dialog box appears and displays a list of your Windows Vista partitions.
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4. | Click
your Windows Vista partition you want to repair and then click Next.
The System Recovery Options dialog box displays a list of recovery
tools.
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System Recovery Options offers you the following five tools to help get your system back on it feet:
Startup Repair—
This tool checks your system for problems that might be preventing it
from starting. If it finds any, it attempts to fix them automatically.
System Restore— This tool runs System Restore so that you can revert your system to a protection point.
Windows Complete PC Restore— This tool restores your system using a CompletePC system image backup, “Maintaining Your Windows Vista System.”
Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool—
This tool checks your computer’s memory chips for faults, which may be
why your system isn’t starting up. Click this option and then click
Restart Now and Check for Problems. If it finds a problem in your chips,
then you’ll need to take your machine into the shop and get the chips
replaced.
Command Prompt— This tool takes you to the Windows Vista command prompt, where you can run command-line utilities such as CHKDSK.
Troubleshooting Startup Using the System Configuration Utility
If Windows Vista
won’t start, troubleshooting the problem usually involves trying various
advanced startup options. It’s almost always a time-consuming and
tedious business.
However, what if Windows Vista will
start, but you encounter problems along the way? Or what if you want to
try a few different configurations to see whether you can eliminate
startup items or improve Windows Vista’s overall performance? For these
scenarios, don’t bother trying out different startup configurations by
hand. Instead, take advantage of Windows Vista’s System Configuration
Utility which, gives you a graphical
front-end that offers precise control over how Windows Vista starts.
Launch the System Configuration Utility and display the General tab, which has three startup options (see Figure 1):
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| Normal Startup | This option loads Windows Vista normally. |
| Diagnostic Startup | This
option loads only those device drivers and system services that are
necessary for Vista to boot. This is equivalent to deactivating all the
check boxes associated with the Selective Startup option, discussed
next. |
| Selective Startup | When
you activate this option, the following check boxes become available.
Use these check boxes to select which portions of the startup should be
processed. |
For a selective startup, you control how Windows Vista processes items using the following two categories:
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| Load System Services | This
category refers to the system services that Windows Vista loads at
startup. The specific services loaded by Windows Vista are listed in the
Services tab. |
Note
A service
is a program or process that performs a specific, low-level support
function for the operating system or for an installed program. For
example, Windows Vista’s Automatic Updates feature is a service.
Note
The Services tab has an
Essential column. Only those services that have Yes in this column are
loaded when you choose the Selective Startup option.
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| Load Startup Items | This
category refers to the items in your Windows Vista Startup group and to
the startup items listed in the Registry. For the latter, the settings
are stored in one of the following keys:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
The specific items loaded from the Startup group or the Registry are listed in the Startup tab. |
To control these startup items, the System Configuration Utility gives you two choices:
To prevent
Windows Vista from loading every item in a particular category, activate
Selective Startup in the General tab and then deactivate the check box
for the category you want. For example, to disable all the items in the
Startup tab, deactivate the Load Startup Items check box.
To
prevent Windows Vista from loading only specific items in a category,
display the category’s tab and then deactivate the check box beside the
item or items you want to bypass at startup.
Here’s a basic
procedure you can follow to use the System Configuration Utility to
troubleshoot a startup problem (assuming that you can start Windows
Vista by using some kind of Safe mode boot, as described earlier):
1. | In
the System Configuration Utility, activate the Diagnostic Startup
option and then reboot the computer. If the problem did not occur during
the restart, you know the cause lies in the system services or the
startup items.
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2. | In the System Configuration Utility, activate the Selective Startup option.
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3. | Activate Load System Services, deactivate Load Startup Items, and then reboot the computer.
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4. | Deactivate Load System Services, activate Load Startup Items, and then reboot the computer.
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5. | The
problem will reoccur either during the step 3 reboot or the step 4
reboot. When this happens, you know that whatever item you activated
before rebooting is the source of the problem. Display the tab of the
item that is causing the problem. For example, if the problem reoccurred
after you activated the Load Startup Items check box, display the
Startup tab.
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6. | Click Disable All to clear all the check boxes.
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7. | Activate one of the check boxes to enable an item and then reboot the computer.
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8. | Repeat
step 7 for each of the other check boxes until the problem reoccurs.
When this happens, you know that whatever item you activated just before
rebooting is the source of the problem.
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If you have a
large number of check boxes to test (such as in the Services tab),
activating one check box at a time and rebooting can become very tedious
very fast. A faster method is to begin by activating the first half of
the check boxes and reboot. One of two things will happen:
- The problem doesn’t reoccur—
This means that one of the items represented by the deactivated check
boxes is the culprit. Clear all the check boxes, activate half of the
other check boxes, and then reboot.
- The problem reoccurs— This means that one of the activated check boxes is the problem. Activate only half of those check boxes and reboot.
Keep halving the number of activated check boxes until you isolate the offending item.
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9. | In the System Configuration Utility’s General tab, activate the Normal Startup option.
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10. | Fix or work around the problem:
If the problem
is a system service, you can disable the service. In Control Panel,
click System and Maintenance, Administrative Tools, Services.
Double-click the problematic service to open its property sheet. In the
Startup Type list, select Disabled and then click OK. If the problem is a Startup item, either delete the item from the Startup group or delete the item from the appropriate Run key in the Registry. If the item is a program, consider uninstalling or reinstalling the program.
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What to Do If Windows Vista Still Won’t Start
If Windows Vista won’t
start no matter what you try, you’re not out of luck just yet. You still
have another couple of things to try:
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| System Restore | This
feature enables you to restore your system to a previous (and,
presumably, operational) setup. |
| Complete PC Restore | This
feature enables you to restore your entire system from a backup copy.
For the details, see the “Recovering |
