HIGHLIGHTS
Windows 95
The Windows 95 boot menu
Anyone who has been using Windows 95 for any length of time will know that although it is a
friendly, useful and (mostly) robust operating system, there will be times when things start to
go wrong. Depending on what sort of things you get up to with your OS, you might find yourself
troubleshooting more often than you would like.
When you get into trouble, when Windows just won't load properly, you usually won't have to
completely reformat and reinstall from scratch. Often Windows just needs a bit of a prod and the
easiest way to do this is from within Windows' start-up files themselves.
Starting From The Start
Along with those who've already had a fiddle with it, anyone who has had the misfortune of an
errant program crashing Windows irredeemably will know what the Startup menu is - it's the
DOS-style menu that pops up when you hit the reset button rather than shut down properly. Even if
you have had prior experience with the Startup menu, there are quite a few uses for it that you
may not be aware of.
To begin with, you don't have to wait until something goes wrong before you bring up the menu
- you can call it up when booting by pressing F8 when u see "Starting Windows 95". On most
occasions you'll only need to access the Startup menu when things aren't working as they should,
although it can come in handy when you want to free up memory for DOS applications or games by
booting a previous version of DOS. For troubleshooting, however, the items of concern are in the
first six options and that's what we'll cover here.
1.Normal
Selecting this will just boot WIndows 95 as usual. It's what you would select if a program crashed
Windows, forcing you to manually reset rather than shut down properly. WIndows knows something went
wrong, but it isn't quite sure what heppenned and is asking for your assurance. Just give it the
go-ahead to boot normally and all should be well (with the possible exception of corrupted files
resulting from the hard reset - but that's a job for your Scandisk utility).
2.Logged (\bootlog.txt)
This is another fairly straightforward one, but it can be very helpful if you are not quite sure
what is going wrong. Windows will boot as usual, but it will record all the steps it takes along the
way in bootlog.txt in the root directory of your boot drive (c:). It also keeps a copy of the
previous log file in the same directory called bootlog.prv, which is just a renamed text file.
You can view both files through any text editor like Notepad or by typing edit c:\bootlog.txt at
the DOS prompt. The major problem with using the bootlog file as a way to troubleshoot loading
problems is the sheer volume of the file generated - Windows seem to enjoy checking every device
ever invented during its boot-up process. For most people, the contents of a bootlog.txt file won't
make much sense, but even so it may help to point you in the right direction. The easiest and quickest
way to find out where things are going wrong is to do a text search for the words "error" and "fail".
It's important to note that all not the error messages in the file necessarily relate to the problems you
are currently experiencing. It's quite common for there to be a couple of non-critical errors during
the start-up process. COmmon errors include a failure to load "dsound.vxd" (part of the DirectX libraries
for DirectSound, even though some soundcards work fine without it), "ebios" (Windows was unable to
find an extended BIOS), "ndis2sup.vxd" (network drivers), "vpowerd" (APM support; either it has been
disabled in the Control Panel or your machine doesn't support it), "vserver.vxd" (controls file
and print sharing under WIndows).
3.Safe Mode
Safe Mode is probably the most helpful utility of the Startup menu and will enable you to fix most common problems
that occur with Windows 95. You can also select this boot mode by pressing F5 when Windows starts booting if you wish,
rather than going through the menu system.
Essentially, it just loads Windows without some device drivers, ignores the autoexec.bat and config.sys files
and sets the display to 640 by 480 modes by loading a generic VGA driver. It's a great way to test out whether you have a
conflict between your real-mode drivers and the protedted-mode ones. If a safe boot works, then chances are
there's a problem with the real-mode drivers, which are DOS device drivers processed in autoexec.bat
and config.sys or perhaps a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) program loaded in these files. If you suspect
this to be the case, follow the directions in option five below.
4.Safe mode with network support
This will boot Windows in safe mode (as above) and load device drivers necessary for networking. If
you require files from a network to fix whatever problems you are having with Windows, then this is the
boot for you.
5.Step-by-step confirmation
A handy feature, this allows you to manually select which lines of your autoexec.bat and config.sys
files you want to run during the start-up process, as well as the ability to bypass the registry.
It can also be selected by pressing Shift-F8 during the start of the Windows boot sequence, rather than going
through the menu.
This is obviously most helpful if you think the problem is with your old DOS device drivers, as this is mostly
what is contained in autoexec.bat and config.sys. To perform a clean real-mode boot, first select
"Step-by-step confirmation", and follow these steps: load the Doublespace driver (if you are using a
compressed hard disk); do not process the config.sys file; load himem.sys; load ifshlp.sys; load
dblbuff.sys (if prompted to do so); do not process autoexec.bat; load the Windows 95 GUI and load all Windows
drivers.
If Windows boots and runs when following the above steps, then it is very likely that the problem lies with an
old DOS device driver or TSR. The next step is to select "Step-by-step confimation" again and this time
process your autoexec.bat and config.sys files, noting the one that causes the problem. Once isolated
, it's just a question of removing the offending line or lines from the file.
6.Command prompt only
As well as being a handy way to enable quick access to your DOS programs, booting to a command
prompt is also a very powerful way to troubleshoot Windows problems. If you find that Windows still
attempts to load when you select this option, you will need to edit your autoexec.bat file and remove
the "win" line from it.
Occasionally, some programs will decide that they want to be started up everytime Windows boots, which
can sometimes cause problems. From a command prompt, start Windows using the "win" command and
hold down the Shift key for the duration of the loading process. This will cause all the third party
programs not to be loaded during the start-up process. If you find that this solves your problem, there are some
steps you can take to remedy the situation.
Firstly, take a look at the StartUp folder and take out anything that you don't want from there. Not all
programs are so friendly that you can put their icon in the StartUp folder and you may need to
manually edit the registry to remove unwanted programs. To do do, start RegEdit (after first making a backup of your
system.dat and user.dat files) and remove any unwanted programs from hkey_local_machine\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run.
If your problem still remains unsolved, don't lose hope just yet. There are still a couple of ways to figure
out what's happening. Try removing your current Windows configuration files, win.ini and system.ini, from the
boot process. Change the name of win.ini to win.bak (or whatever you like) and then try running Windows
from the command line once again. If this fixes the problem, edit your win.ini file and place a semicolon in front
of the load= and run= lines or make sure that there are no entries for that section.
System.ini files can also be a source of problems but there is a ready-made backup available
called system.cb. Change the name of system.ini to system.bak and then create a copy of system.cb
named system.ini (copy c:\windows\system.cb c:\windows\system.ini). You will need to manually add some lines to the new
system.ini which are detailed below:
[386Enh]
mouse=*vmouse,msmouse.vxd
[boot]
drivers=mmsystem.dll
mouse.drv=mouse.drv
If this solution works, then it indicates that the problem has been caused by something in the two sections
above, [386Enh] or [boot]. It is still possible to keep your original system.ini file but you will have to use a trial and error method
to determine which commands are causing the problems. Simply place a semicolon in front of the lines from the two sections and try
to determine which one is causing Windows to throw a hissy fit.