The Little Geeni

Most of us have had the problem before. You start up your Windows machine and are greeted with a cryptic error message or “blue screen of death” before your system boots. It’s a sinking feeling. You cannot access the operating system and troubleshooting the problem can be difficult. In most cases, people end up resorting to drastic measures, such as reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system. It’s not always a lost cause. Windows Server 2003 includes a number of alternative boot options to help you troubleshoot and resolve these issues.

When attempting to recover from a Windows boot failure, the first step is to get to the boot options menu. You can do this by hitting the F8 key on your keyboard immediately after the Windows boot loader screen is displayed. Once you have accessed the boot options menu, you will have a number of options which are outlined below:

Safe Mode

This option starts the operating system with a bare minimum of system drivers. Safe Mode will help you when troubleshooting boot failures caused by device drivers and registry problems. This mode does not provide networking support and most system services are disabled.

Safe Mode with Networking

The same exact thing as Safe Mode, only with Networking support.

Safe Mode with Command Prompt

This is a command line interface. It can be useful for renaming files and doing other basic command line routines. The windows explorer shell is not loaded and it’s basically just a dos prompt.

Enable Boot Logging

Boot logging starts the system normally, but it creates a detailed log of all the services and drivers that are trying to load at boot time. This can help you determine what is causing the system to crash. The default location for the log file is C:Windows
tbtlog.txt.

Enable VGA Mode

This actually loads the currently installed video driver, but uses the lowest resolution and color depth available. This is a useful option if you are troubleshooting an issue with your video card or monitor driver.

Last Known Good Configuration

You can use this option to revert to a copy of the registry that was saved during the last successful login to Windows. Although it sounds great, I can’t remember a single instance that this has ever worked for me in the past, and believe me, I’ve tried it several times.

Directory Services Restore Mode

This is only applicable for Active Directory Domain Controllers. It allows you to perform maintenance and backup recovery tasks on Active Directory.

Debugging Mode

This will allow you to hook up a working server via a serial cable to send debugging messages for analysis. This requires a great deal of configuration on the receiving end and may not be a realistic option for most people.

Finally, you can use the Recovery Console to perform more advanced troubleshooting. The Recovery Console is not installed by default. If it is not installed, you can still use it by booting to the Operating System CD and choosing the “Repair with Recovery Console” option. The Recovery Console allows you to change service startup options, create or extend volumes and or select alternative boot options.

In this article we’ve covered the multiple boot options provided by Windows Server 2003. If you are not dealing with a hardware failure you can often narrow down and correct most boot problems in Windows Server 2003 using these tools.

Troubleshooting 2003, Boot, Failures, Server, Troubleshooting, Windows

How to Fix a Computer or PC that is Not Booting Up? How Can I Fix my PC Without Having a Boot CD? What Should I Do if I Don’t Have a Boot Disc? Where Can I Get a Boot CD for Windows?

One of my friend’s computer had numerous problems. He used to ignore all the error messages he gets in his Windows XP and continued to work with it, until the day it became dead.

And he asked me how he could revive it, because he was not even able to start his computer and didn’t know where his boot CD was.

He immediately came to me, because I usually help all my friends with their PC troubleshooting.

And when I asked him why his computer was a mess, he said that he really didn’t care about all the errors or it’s slow performance as long as it continued to boot and worked. He previously had freezing issues, Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), Start up error messages, OS errors and so on, and he just ignored all….until it stopped working.

I gave him a simple solution called Reimage. Since he didn’t have a boot CD. I asked him to build a boot CD first, with the instructions found on ‘Build a Boot CD’ page.

And after making a boot CD

He had to check this video ‘Using Boot CD with Reimage’ to fix his non booting PC located at the bottom right of the webpage, and then I asked him to click the Reimage link on the page for a ‘Free Scan’ to continue fixing his PC. The PC Repair tool fixed his computer within 30 minutes to revive the dead PC to as good as new PC. 

He was so happy and amazed and praised the tool as “Magic” repair tool.

Reimage is not just a registry cleaner, anti-spyware, windows repair and an Anti-virus software… Reimage is a full-service, comprehensive “PC-Wash” that retrieves a “Just-Like-New” computer while keeping your personal data secure and protected. 

In fact, Reimage not only detects and terminates Adware, Spyware, Trojans, Key-loggers, Identity Theft scripts, Hijackers, Tracking Threats, Rogue Anti-Spyware, Unwanted Software, Phishing and Popups.files- it also fixes ALL the damage they left behind. Again, this is just one of the many reasons why Reimage is so unique and superior. A registry cleaner will simply just delete the redundant entry in the windows registry, again it will not correct the damage, for that matter even the anti-virus programs would just delete the corrupted file or entry. But Reimage fixes the corrupted file by replacing the correct file from a huge Windows repository of 25 million OS components.

Reimage is an “All-in-One” PC Repair Solution – based on Patented Technology.
It is so high-end and professional that it is adopted (as a secret weapon) by PC
technicians for remote PC repair all over the globe. Reimage is the future of PC
Repair -It’s fully automated and it’s so easy to use.

Troubleshooting Boot, Booting/Starting, Computer, having, Windows, Without