Chapter Nine
WINDOWS
TROUBLESHOOTING TOOLS
2
Outline
Device manager
Disk clean-up
Disk defragment
System Configuration Utility
System restore
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Device manager
It is a Control Panel applet in Microsoft Windows operating systems.
It allows users to view and control the hardware attached to the computer.
When a piece of hardware is not working, the offending hardware is
highlighted for the user to deal with. The list of hardware can be sorted by
various criteria.
For each device, users can:
Supply device drivers in accordance with the Windows Driver Model
Enable or disable devices
Tell Windows to ignore malfunctioning devices
View other technical properties
Device Manager was introduced with Windows 95.
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Device manager
Device Manager keeps track of additions and changes on your
computer Windows OSes as new hardware is added and old drivers
become outdated. As a solutions provider, you can use Device
Manager to identify sources of driver-related performance issues and
resolve hardware conflicts.
Device Manager gives solutions providers a complete view into system
hardware, and it is a great tool for managing Windows hardware.
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Device manager
In device manager you will see that all hardware's
including:
Processors,
Disk drives,
Keyboards, and other input devices, peripheral components and
drives with removable media appear in a conveniently organized
view within Device Manager.
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Device manager
7
Device manager
Devices and Printers is an applet new to Windows 7, and it is a
cousin of Device Manager.
This applet displays icons of all devices connected to your PC.
Devices displayed in the Devices and Printers applet are not
internal components of the computer; rather, they are
devices that a user can interact with.
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Device manager
Bluetooth devices, Universal Serial Bus (USB) devices and multi-
function printers are just some of the items that may appear in
Devices and Printers.
Similar to Device Manager, the Devices and Printers applet
lets you view and troubleshoot hardware devices on the
computer, but it is restricted to external hardware rather than
internal components.
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Disk clean-up
Disk Clean-up (cleanmgr.exe) is a computer maintenance
utility included in Microsoft Windows designed to free up
disk space on a computer's hard drive.
The utility first searches and analyzes the hard drive for files
that are no longer of any use, and then removes the
unnecessary files.
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Disk clean-up
There are a number of different file categories that Disk Clean-up
targets when performing the initial disk analysis:
Compression of old files
Temporary Internet files
Temporary Windows files
Downloaded program files
Recycle Bin
Removal of unused applications or optional Windows components
Offline web pages (cached)
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Disk defragment
Disk Defragmenter is a utility in Microsoft Windows designed to
increase access speed by rearranging files stored on a disk to
occupy contiguous storage locations, a technique called
defragmentation.
Defragmenting a disk minimizes head travel, which reduces the
time it takes to read files from and write files to the disk.
Disk Defragmenter also reduces system startup times.
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Disk defragment
You may not notice any drastic improvement in disk performance,
especially when the hard drive is frequently defragmented. But if you
just defragmented your PC’s hard drive for the first time, you’ll notice
the difference before and after defragmentation.
Remember:
You cannot defragment a network drive.
Do not defragment a media card or flash drive.
Optical drives cannot be defragmented.
Even after running the Defragmentation utility, file fragments remain on
the hard drive.
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System Configuration Utility
MSConfig (officially called System Configuration in Windows Vista,
Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10, and Microsoft System
Configuration Utility in previous operating systems) is a system utility to
troubleshoot the Microsoft Windows startup process. It can disable or
re-enable software, device drivers and Windows services that run at
startup, or change boot parameters.
It is bundled with all versions of Microsoft Windows operating systems
since Windows 98 except Windows 2000. Windows 95 and Windows
2000 users can download the utility as well, although it was not
designed for them.
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System Configuration Utility
MSConfig is often used for speeding up the Microsoft Windows startup
process of the machine. According to Microsoft, MSConfig was not
meant to be used as a startup management program.
MSConfig is a troubleshooting tool which is used to temporarily disable
or re-enable software, device drivers or Windows services that run
during startup process to help the user determine the cause of a
problem with Windows.
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System Configuration Utility
Msconfig helps Windows control the software that automatically loads
while Windows is starting.
System Configuration Utility consists of five functional tabs such as:
General
Boot
Services
Startup and
Tools.
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System Restore
System Restore is a feature in Microsoft Windows that allows the user
to revert their computer's state (including system files, installed
applications, Windows Registry, and system settings) to that of a
previous point in time, which can be used to recover from system
malfunctions or other problems.
This does not affect personal files such as documents, music, pictures,
and videos.
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System Restore
It is not possible to create a permanent restore point. All restore points
will eventually be deleted after the time specified in the RPLifeInterval
registry setting is reached or earlier if allotted disk space is insufficient.
For data integrity purposes, System Restore does not allow other
applications or users to modify or delete files in the directory where
the restore points are saved.
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System Restore
System Restore can be disabled completely to regain disk space. It
automatically disables itself if the disk free space is too low for it to
operate.
Old restore points are discarded in order to keep the volume's usage
within the specified amount.
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End of Chapter 9
