Start up and General Computer Problems For Advanced Users

“Won’t start” is a very broad topic; the cause can be anything from the monitor being turned off to a bad DLL. Here’s a further breakdown with some ideas for troubleshooting each situation.

WARNING:

• Before you attempt anything: If you don’t feel comfortable working with Electricity or Electronics and feel you might damage your computer, this page is not really for you.
• Another word of advice: If you have lost Data or can not get access to your Hard Drive, any further work done to your Hard Drive or attempts to fix a hard drive problem can overwrite or damage existing, even hidden Files on that Hard Drive.
• Do not touch any Electronic Part inside your computer without first Earthing yourself to the Computer Chassis, static electricity could render your motherboard and other components inoperable.
• Play Safe and give us a call. Here

No video:

One of the hardest problems to solve is when you don’t get video after turning your computer on. After all, it’s kind of hard to read any error messages that appear on-screen without any video display. Here are some things you can check when you’re not getting any video at boot-up:

• Make sure the monitor is turned on, plugged in, and connected to the PC.
• Verify that the computer is turned on and plugged in and all connectors are snugly in place.
• The PC’s power supply fan should be working, and the drives should be spinning.
• Remove the cover. Is the CPU fan working? Is there anything noticeably wrong, like a melted chip, an odd odour, or smoke?
• Sometimes, a reversed hard disk cable or drive jumper conflicts can prevent video from appearing on-screen. If you think for some reason these cables have been tampered with, you can disconnect all the drives except the floppy and then add the other drives back in, one at a time, until you see some video. You should turn your computer off before connecting and disconnecting any devices.
• Make sure the video card is firmly seated. If it’s a PCI card, try placing it in a different slot. (With an AGP or PCIExpress card, you can’t do this, since there’s usually only one slot provided for these types of Video Cards.)
• Any further testes should be undertaken by a technician. Contact Us.

Windows won’t start:

Suppose you get video to display on the monitor, and you can get into the BIOS, but Windows won’t start. The problem could be many things. To find the fix, check out these potential causes:

• Make sure the hard disk that contains the Windows OS is functional. See the steps below for details on how to make sure the BIOS recognises the drive and that the drive is correctly partitioned and formatted.
• If Windows is installed on a different drive than the boot drive, make sure the boot drive is functional too.
• If Windows begins to start but then hangs, a specific driver or DLL is probably causing the problem. If you are using a version of Windows that allows you to start with step-by-step confirmations, do so, and make a note of the last line that appeared on-screen before the hang. Then, start in Safe Mode and remove the program that is causing the problem or use MSCONFIG, the System Configuration Utility, to exclude that item from Startup.
• If Windows locks up at the point where the chosen video mode kicks in - that is, after the splash screen but before you see the mouse pointer - an invalid video mode has probably been chosen. Start in Safe Mode and change the video to a relatively conservative setting, such as 256 colour, 800 x 600 pixels, with Adapter Default for the refresh rate.

Hard Drive testing:
Here’s a quick look at the process I follow when troubleshooting a hard disk.

• Physical connectivity - Is the drive receiving power? Is it plugged into the PC by a correctly connected ribbon cable? For IDE drives, are its jumpers set correctly? Or with SCSI drives, are its SCSI termination and ID set correctly?
• BIOS setup - Does the BIOS see the drive?
• Viruses - Does the drive contain any boot sector viruses I need to remove before continuing?
• Partitioning - Does FDISK find a valid partition on the drive? Is it active?
• Formatting - Is the drive formatted using a file system that the OS can recognise?
• Drive errors - Is a physical or logical drive error causing read/write problems on the drive?
• Operating system - Does your OS have a feature that checks the status of each drive on your system? If so, what is that status?

System Processes:

Task Manager Process List For those of you who may not know, you can think of processes as programs or parts of programs that are currently running on your computer. Even though you may not be aware of it, your computer is almost always doing something. You get a partial idea of what your computer is up to by checking the number of processes running on your computer by going into your task manager and selecting the process tab after tapping the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys.

Checking the number of processes running is fine for a spot check, but the best way to deal with too many processes is to first make sure your computer is totally clean. By clean I mean that you should:

1. Fully scan your computer for all Viruses, Malware and Spyware
2. Uninstalled all programs that you do not use or need
3. Stop programs from starting during boot. You can do this by going into many of your programs such as Instant Messenger and unchecking the box that tells it to load at startup. You can also use the tools mention later here.
4. A tool that is available in Windows is the MSCONFIG form. With this you can check your startup items and uncheck the ones that you do not want to start. If you are unsure of any items listed, leave them or perform a Google search to learn more about them. START > RUN > Type MSCONFIG > Press Enter> Click on the STARTUP Tab. (How to use MSCONFIG)
5. Once you have your system fairly clean you can now start looking at the individual processes running in the process list. You can go down through the list one by one and perform a Google search on each process or go to one of these sites to learn more about each process:
   http://www.tasklist.org/tasklist_s.html or http://processlist.com/

Note: If you choose to END a process from task manager, this will only end that process until the next time you restart your computer.

The number of processes running on your computer at any given moment is dependent on a huge number of factors such as:

1. What operating system you are running – Because of all the extras, Windows Media Edition usually has the highest number of processes running.
2. Installed Hardware – Extra Drivers to control hardware such as high end Video, Sound cards as well as modems and other extras can increase the number of processes running. Even installing an All-In-One printer can add several new processes to your list.
3. How many devices you have plugged in – Your numbers will continue to rise if you have a ton of devices plugged in such hard drives, web cams, joy sticks, printers and scanners.
4. The software that you have installed – Many software packages have updaters and other components running all the time even when you are not actually using the program.
5. Security Software Installed – Some All-in-one security suites that have Antivirus, Antispyware, firewall, Antispam, Antiphishing and Anti-everything can add a large number of processes.
6. When you take the reading – Your numbers can vary greatly depending on what is going on inside your computer at that moment. Antivirus software could be checking your drive for viruses or Windows could be downloading updates.
7. Number of Programs currently running – Every program that is actually running will add to the process list.
8. Programs set to run at Start Up – Many programs may be set to start automatically upon boot such as Instant Messenger, Winzip, Real Player and Windows Messenger.
9. Virus, Malware and Spyware Activity - Process numbers can rise with any unwanted activity, so make sure your computer is totally clean of all Viruses and Spyware.
10. Number of Users - Having more than one user logged into your computer can also increase the total number of processes.

To give you an idea of what numbers are possible. A clean install of Windows XP on a basic stripped down computer without any extra hardware can be as low as 21-25 processes running. After installing some basics such as a simple printer, Antivirus Software, Microsoft Office, and Adobe Reader you might end up around 29-36. Now on the other side of this, I have gone into the local computer store and checked the number of processes running on a brand new Windows XP Multimedia computer and found as many as 75 processes running. With all the trial and Free software that is pre installed at the factory, I have found many new computers right out of the box are in the 50’s and 60’s.
Determining how many processes your computer should have running is not an easy task and can take a fair amount of time to research.

There are a number of tools available to help you fine tune what is running on your computer. SpyBot Search and Destroy and Microsoft Defender both come with some advanced tools to help identify and shut down unwanted startup items. There is also AutoRuns a Windows Sysinternals tool. But Be Aware you can render your system inoperable if you remove the wrong items here. Another tool I use that is a little safer is Mike Lins’ StartUp Control Panel. You will find these tools on the Downloads Page

NOTE: Shutting down some processes may prevent your computer from working correctly.

It would be impossible to tell you what processes you need or don’t need without all the information about your computer’s hardware, software and knowing something about your personal preferences.