o Boot options for repair (for users and Tech’s alike)

The following information could possibly help you avoid using the services of a Tech person in the event your computer does not start up properly.

I believe in arming the real estate agent with information that could perhaps save a great deal of time and money. I say this because if your computer does not come to a login screen or keeps restarting, you may be able to resolve the issue very quickly yourself and I will tell you how. Let’s say you turn on your computer and you get a blue screen with text and then it continually reboots. Or, when you boot your computer you notice that you never get to a login screen, or it sits there forever and never makes it to the desktop. What you want to do next falls into 3 choices below from the screenshot below that.

I usually resolve issues in the following order. How you get the boot options to come up is when you first turn on your computer, tap the F8 key once every second until you see the black boot screen in the screenshot below. Up/down arrows will allow you to highlight an option and then click the enter key:

1) Last known good configuration

o This is an easy choice. If there has been a change such as a driver or a program has been installed that is now causing your system to not boot up properly, you may be able to reverse the effects of the install by choosing this option.

2) Repair your computer

o Let’s say you tried the last known good configuration option and that has not worked for you. You can choose this option and what it attempts to do is replace or repair the startup files that may have been affected that are causing the boot issue.

3) Safe mode with networking

o There are times when even though you cannot get to a login screen or to your desktop through a normal boot, you may be able to reach your desktop by choosing this option. If you are able to get to your desktop with this option, then there is a good chance that an installed program is what is keeping you from getting to your desktop with a typical boot. Safe mode with networking temporarily stops drivers and processes from loading up which may be at fault. If you can get to your desktop with this option and you remember that just before your computer crashed that a program was installed, then you can uninstall the offending program from this option and reboot again and perhaps everything will return back to normal.

So as you can see, there are a number of potential quick fixes that can often result in returning your system back to a normal state in less time that it takes to call a Tech, let alone waiting for them to arrive to your location.

Incidentally, this is the last article of the Windows 7 series. We will rotate the articles in this series from time to time. I hope you have enjoyed and learned something from these articles. I wish you many happy years of use of your Windows 7 computer armed with the information in these articles.

Here´s to happy computing!

Richard Tausch, MCSE, CCNA, CompTia Security +