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Windows

Symptom: Windows won't start or crashes frequently.

Minor problem: The best-case scenario is that a patch clobbered your system. If you authorize Windows Update to apply patches automatically, key Windows files may change without your knowledge or consent. Fortunately, whenever a patch or update gets applied--even if you manually replace a driver (by far the most common source of instability)--the installer creates a system checkpoint, so it's easy to roll back the offending patch. If you're running XP, you can try using the System Restore feature to restore your PC to a state it was in before things stopped working. Otherwise, restart your computer, and as soon as you hear the PC beep (indicating the completion of its power-on self-test, or POST), press F8 and choose Last Known Good Configuration (your most recent settings that worked).

Moderate problem: If reverting to the last known good configuration doesn't help, a piece of hardware or system software has probably gone belly-up. To investigate, you should crawl around your system using Safe Mode--a special minimally functional way of running Windows that bypasses your start-up programs; ignores essentially all hardware except your keyboard, mouse, and monitor; and avoids your fancy graphics driver (frequently a source of problems). To start in Safe Mode, reboot, wait for your system to finish the POST, press F8, and then choose Safe Mode. To check for hardware problems using Windows Device Manager, choose Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, System, click the Hardware tab, and click the Device Manager button. Any devices that appear with a question mark are immediately suspect: Double-click each to follow up. To uninstall any recently installed (and therefore suspect) software, click Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs. When you feel that it's safe to go back into the water, restart your computer and then allow it to boot normally.

Dire problem: So you've tried Safe Mode, and nothing helps. Maybe one of your Windows system files has the hiccups. Before you reformat your hard drive, run a Repair. To do this, boot from your Windows XP CD; when given the choice 'To set up Windows XP now', press Enter. Accept the license agreement. Then, 'To repair the selected Windows XP installation', press R. Windows reinstalls all of its files and then restarts. Once your PC is running again, confirm that your firewall is working, go to Windows Update (Start, All Programs, Windows Update), and download and install all the patches your system requires.

Symptom: My scheduled tasks don't seem to run.

Minor: If you have scheduled any repetitive tasks to occur automatically on your PC, those jobs may not have run. As a result, your last disk backup may be four months old, or the fragmentation pattern on your hard drive may look like Swiss cheese. Windows may fail to run jobs you've scheduled using the Windows Scheduling Wizard. What's more, if your backups, disk cleaning sessions, or defrag runs never happened, Windows won't tell you. To check, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. If the rightmost column shows that a scheduled program hasn't been running properly, the most likely culprit is an out-of-date password. To change the user account password for a task, right-click the task in the Scheduled Tasks list, choose Properties, make sure that the 'Run as' box on the Task tab refers to a valid user, click the Passwords button, and enter the current password for that account.

Moderate: If resetting the account password doesn't work, you need to dig deeper. Windows Scheduler keeps a log of its activities, and this record may prove instructive. To see it, click Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks and bring up the Scheduled Tasks list. Click Advanced, View Log. Notepad will appear, with the file SchedLgU.txt open. Windows maintains this fixed-length log file cyclically: New entries overwrite old entries until the program reaches the end of the file, at which point Windows jumps up to the beginning of the file and resumes overwriting old entries. Click Edit, Find and search for five asterisks (*****). That will take you to the most recent entries in the file. Look for obvious problems such as program error codes or invalid user accounts.

Dire: If the Scheduled Tasks log fails to pinpoint your problem, you may need to create a new account with administrator privileges and give it a password (see tips 16 through 20 of "76 Ways to Get More Out of Windows"). (Windows will run scheduled tasks only if they are attached to password-protected accounts or if they run with accounts verified on your corporate network. Neither the Scheduled Tasks Wizard nor Windows Help warns you about that crucial fact.) Once you have a password-protected account, bring up the Scheduled Tasks list again, double-click the Add Scheduled Tasks icon, and tell the wizard to use the new account.