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Windows 98
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Windows
98 Troubleshooting Utilities
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official launch date for Windows 98 is June 25th. But many people
are already using release candidate version of Windows 98. Or have
the "gold" copy of 98 running on their system.
98 comes with a lot of helpful troubleshooting utilities.
Here's a brief list of programs and their function. I'll go into
more details for each program in upcoming issues.
System Information - Microsoft wants this to the be
starting point for troubleshooting. You can launch other utilities
from SI by going to its TOOLS dropdown menu. SI gives you a very
complete summary of your system configuration; in terms of
hardware resources and software installed drivers. It even tracks when
you've change a driver. Start SI by running MSINFO32.EXE.
System Config Utility - This may be the best
troubleshooting tool Microsoft gave to support people. Want a user
to switch to standard 640x480x16 colors video mode? No need to
walk the user through the tedious steps of going into display
properties / settings / etc. Just check a box in SCU and you're
done! Likewise for editing your SYSTEM.INI and WIN.INI and Startup
folder. Just check and uncheck boxes. Very cool. Start SI by
running MSCONFIG.EXE
SCANREG - This utility is run automatically everything
you start up Windows 98. It will check to see if your registry is
corrupted; if so, it will try to fix it. In addition, it will make
a backup of your good registry (up to five copies). With
SCANREG, users should never see the dreaded corrupted registry
error message in Windows 95.
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Using
Windows 98's System File Checker
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troubleshooting tool in Windows 98 is its System File Checker (SFC).
You access SFC by going to Start / Programs / Accessories / System
Tools / System Information. Then go to Tools and select SFC.
SFC allows the user to extract specific files directly from the
Windows 98 CAB files, using a graphical interface. In Windows 95, to
extract files from the CABs meant you must do it from a DOS prompt.
And the parameters were long and cryptic, so it was easy to make a
mistake.
Why would you want to extract files from the CABs to begin with?
In case an application or program overwrites a critical system file
(EXE, VXD, or DLL) without asking you first.
In addition, SFC allows you to do a scan of all your current
system files. So if a file is altered in the future, SFC will inform
you the next time you rescan it. And you can make a backup of all
the changed files.
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Using
Windows 98's System Information
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mentioned in Windows
98 Troubleshooting Utilities (Above)
System Information (SI) is one of the troubleshooting
tools that comes bundled with Windows 98.
You can launch SI by going to Start / Programs /
Accessories / System Tools / System Information. Or you can
launch SI directly by going to Start / Run... and type in
MSINFO32.EXE.
The main purpose of SI is to give the user a complete
overview of the current system. SI is divided into three
parts:
Hardware Resources - Allows you to examine
interrupt (IRQ), port address, DMA channel, etc. usage. In
addition, this is the first place you should start to
troubleshoot resource (mainly IRQ and/or DMA channel)
conflicts.
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