Windows utilities

The first one is not really a utility, but still very useful: the Windows bootlog. Start up your computer and press ctrl (or F8) untill you see the startup menu. Choose Logged (/BOOTLOG.TXT). Windows will start up normally, but it will save the whole startup procedure to an ordinary text file named Bootlog, located on your Windows drive (probably C:\). It contains a list of all the files and 'devices' (just a another name for certain files) that Windows has loaded, each time indicating if the load has failed or succeeded. The word you should look for is 'failed', of course. If you should spot that word, don't panic: not all files or devices are of major importance. Still, there must be something wrong with a file that Windows wasn't able to load properly, so you should try out if reinstalling the file does any good. This can be done by using System File Checker or the extracting procedure.

Dr. Watson (Windows\Drwatson.exe) has been around since Windows 95, but not many people know him. This tool won't prevent crashes, but it will provide a lot of information about them, much more than the error message box 'details'. When you start it up nothing much will happen, because it only comes to the foreground in case of a fault. Each time you have a crash, Dr. Watson saves all the information in a logfile (in a special Drwatson folder, a subfolder of Windows), which you can view if you click the aforementioned details-button. If you want Dr. Watson to monitor your system automatically and continuously, add him to the Startup group (Start, Settings, Taskbar & Start Menu, Start Menu Programs, Add, Browse (go to Windows\Drwatson.exe and click 'open'), Next, click Startup, Next, Finish--the next time you start up Windows, the Watson icon will appear in the System Tray).

The very easy to use System File Checker (SFC, Windows\System\Sfc.exe), not available in Windows 95, lets you know if any of the so-called Windows modules have changed since Windows 98 was installed.

Modules are pieces of code that are used by several applications and are dynamically loaded into the computer memory only when they're needed. Most of them have extensions like .dll, .vxd, .ocx etc. Sometimes these modules can be replaced by newer versions when you install new programs. This is one of the reasons why it's not always easy to completely uninstall certain programs: they leave some waste behind in the Windows system files and are often the cause of an incessant flood of blue screens and error messages.

System File Checker can offer some help here: it tells you which modules were updated and lets you 'unupdate' them if you wish to do so. It also lets you extract files from the Windows cd fast and easy.

The program itself may be easy to use, but it is quite difficult to decide whether a file should be restored to its original version or not. Some programs won't work without the newer or modified versions--you may get rid of invalid page faults and fatal exceptions, but you may also lose a few programs. Luckily, SFC asks you to save a backup each time you want to restore a file to its Windows cd version, so you can't make irreversible mistakes.

This program can dramatically improve your system if carefully used. And carefully used means: don't restore files if the one on your hard disk is a more recent version than the one originally installed (SFC gives you a date, a version number and the size of the file). Restore the file if the version is older or if the version numbers are equal but the size of the currently used module is reduced compared to the original one (which could mean that the file is corrupted).

Concluding: System File Checker can be a real problem solver, and you should run it each time you have installed or uninstalled a program or application.

The Version Conflict Manager (VCM, Windows\Vcmui.exe) does not have the same purpose as SFC. VCM is meant to be used after you have upgraded from Windows 95 or 3.x to 98. The drivers and modules that have been modified under the previous version of Windows, will ruthlessly be overwritten when Windows 98 is installed. This could cause certain programs to malfunction--but no need to panic, because VCM makes a backup of the overwritten files and lets you restore them easily.

The System Configuration Utility, mostly called Msconfig (Windows\System\Msconfig.exe), has little troubleshooting power for the non-professional Windows user--just click its 'Advanced' button to see what we mean.

Still, this program is much better than the System Configuration Editor (Windows\System\Sysedit.exe) with which Windows 95 users will have to make do. Both programs should only be used by someone who knows what all those lines in config.sys, autoexec.bat, win.ini etc. really mean, for instance someone who has read The Windows 98 Resource Kit. If you want to play with these system files, be sure to make a backup, and also be sure where to find it when you need it. The backups made with Msconfig have the extension .pss; autoexec.bat and config.sys and their pss-backups are to be found on the Windows drive (probably C:\), system.ini and win.ini and their pss-backups are located in the Windows directory.

If you mess up and can't get Windows to start up anymore, replace the corrupted files with the backups. In DOS, you type, for instance:

C:\> copy config.pss config.sys

The Automatic Skip Driver Agent (ASD, Windows\Asd.exe) has a somewhat bizarre quality: it is meant to help you with Windows startup problems, but you have to run the program in Windows... Anyway, if you can get Windows to run despite certain problems, this program can be very useful in detecting trouble with conflicting hardware. It makes use of the Hardware Troubleshooting Wizard to help you solve the problem (see our article about the Windows Troubleshooting Wizards).

If you run ASD, it will probably (hopefully) just display a message that no ASD-faults were detected on your machine.

Windows Utilities