Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category
It will happen, your Hard Drive will crash. That’s a fact! It’s just a matter of time. Doesn’t matter which brand or make it is, the fact remains that computer hardware will wear out over time.
The computer’s hard drive is composed of small intricate parts that are constantly working to read and write data. Now, if your car needs to have it’s brakes replaced after much use, imagine a small piece of hardware that is constantly running at 5400 - 7200 revolutions per minute!~??!
Now, if you’re faced with the blue screen of death and the “unmountable boot volume†error you may still have a possibility of retrieving data or even fixing the issue.
What you will need: an installation disk.
1. Boot up to your Windows XP installation disk.
2. When you see a welcome screen, hit the R key on your keyboard. This will enter you into recovery mode with a DOS prompt.
3. Now type chkdsk /p and hit Enter. This will launch a utility which will check for errors on your hard drive.
4. After the process is done, type fixboot and hit Enter to repair any damaged boot files which may have become corrupted. When asked to say yes or no, type the Y key on your keyboard.
5. Type exit and press the Enter key to reboot your computer.
If all went well, you should now be able to boot back into Windows without a problem!
Now, if that doesn’t work, you can try the old trick of removing the hard drive from your PC, place it in a zip lock bag and put it in your freezer for about 30 minutes to an hour. Believe me, I know it sounds crazy, but this has saved my butt more times than not… not just my butt, but the user’s as well!
Hope it helps!
I experienced this issue with a client PC who called in because their PC was not able to connect to the network. The computer was setup for synchronizing with offline files.
This is what I found and did to fix the issue: It resets the CSC (offline files) database.
Add the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache
Key Name: FormatDatabase
Key Type: DWORD
Key Value: 1
Note The actual value of the registry key is ignored. This registry change requires a restart. When the computer is restarting, the shell will reinitialize the CSC cache and then delete the registry key if the registry entry exists.
Warning All cache files are deleted and unsynchronized data is lost.
Every computer with the Microsoft Windows operating system installed, be it XP or Vista, has a registry. Your computer’s registry is where all the information about your computer is stored.
When the registry is filled with invalid data entries or corrupt information, this is when you will notice that your PC may no longer work or perform the way it used to.
What causes or creates the invalid information in your registry? Well, that is usually caused when software or programs are not properly uninstalled or removed.
By removing these invalid entries, you can significantly increase the performance of your PC.
What will you need? A very good registry cleaner!
Registry cleaners were created with the purpose or goal of scanning the entire registry and removing those that are no longer associated with a program or software.
RegistryFix seems to be the best tool that we are using for the moment. Along with the pc’s enhancement in performance, this is what the program does for you:
The free full scan will identify errors related to :
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Missing file associations
Best of all… you can start a free scan right now! Try it at RegistryFix!
Worked on a pc, getting the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) with the stop error 0×0000007E. Beauty of it all, it didn’t specify a driver file, like pci.sys, or anything similar.
Here is the fix for that:
Try moving all third-party driver files from the %Windir%\System32\Drivers folder to a different location. Follow these steps to move the third-party driver files:
- Use the Recovery Console to start the computer, or start the computer from a different installation of Windows if you have performed a parallel Windows installation.
- Create a temporary folder to hold the driver files. For example, you could create c:\DriverTemp.
- Move all files that do not have a creation date for Windows XP of 8/13/2001 from the %Windir%\System32\Drivers folder into the temporary folder that you created in step 2.Caution If the computer relies on third-party IDE or SCSI controller drivers for correct operation, you must identify those driver files and then leave them in the %Windir%\System32\Drivers folder.
- Restart the computer.
- Continue the Windows Setup program. You can add the driver files back to the computer one at a time to identify the faulty driver.
Let us know how you make out! Hope it helps!
One of our clients where we monitor their server was receiving an error that their Remote and Routing service had stopped. It was a first for us. I couldn’t think of anything that would have caused this.
When I looked at the Event logs I found that the HDD was near it’s capacity. I searched the drive for any content that could be cleared up. Usually the temp folder, update uninstall folders, etc.
I then realized that the “WsusContent” folder was near 13 GB. Whoa!!! That was quite a bit.
The first step was all I needed to reduce the size… here they are:
Based on my research, WSUS Server will not automatic purge old and unneeded updates, so this kind of large WSUS folder issue is general. I suggest we try the following steps to see if we can resolve this issue:
1. Use “WsusDebugTool.exe /Tool:PurgeUnneededFiles” command to purge unused files.
You can download the tool from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/bb466192.aspx
Note: The Server Diagnostic Tool.
2. Use WSUSutil command with movecontent option to change the file system location where the WSUS Server stores update files. For more info, please refer to:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/2686bd2b-910a-479b-961e-cea2a20280241033.mspx?mfr=true
Hope this helps!!