Its a troubleshooting/diagnosis option in Windows that starts your computer in a limited state with only the essential drivers, services and files needed to boot Windows. Network and Video drivers are not loaded in safe mode. That’s the reason you see a low desktop resolution in safe mode.

There are  3 ways to start Safe Mode:

1. Safe Mode (The default one with no internet)
2. Safe Mode with Networking (the one with internet)
3. Safe Mode with Command Prompt.

People usually get rid off their Spywares in this mode. So this manual troubleshooting and fixing is the option for manual eradication of spyware as only the bare minimum files are loaded in this mode and lets you delete files easily which are unable to delete in the normal mode.

How to start Windows Xp in Safe mode?

1. Press F8 before the Windows Xp Splash screen(see image below) shows up.

2. The Windows Advanced Options Menu is loaded.

3. Use keyboard arrow keys to select the type of Safe mode you want – default or with networking or just the command prompt. Click Enter.

4. Now the Windows Xp will start in Safe mode.

How to start Windows Vista in Safe mode?

1. Start pressing F8 as soon the computer starts, to open the Advanced Options Menu.

2. Use keyboard arrow keys to select the type of Safe mode you want – default or with networking or just the command prompt. Click Enter.

3. Now the Windows Vista will start in Safe mode.

How to start Windows 7 in Safe mode?

1. Start pressing F8 as soon the computer starts, to open the Advanced Options Menu.

2. The first option is “Repair your computer”, “Safe Mode” is from the second option. Use keyboard arrow keys to select the type of Safe mode you want – default or with networking or just the command prompt. Click Enter.

3. Now the Windows 7 will start in Safe mode.

Note: When you have Multiple Windows to boot, select the Windows version you want to enter into using the arrow keys on the “Boot Loader Menu” and start pressing F8 key to open the Advanced Options Menu.

Using the System Configuration Utility for Windows Xp

1. Click Start, Run and type MSCONFIG in the open box and click OK
2. The System Configuration Utility opens up, On the BOOT.INI tab, Check the “/SAFEBOOT” option, and then click OK and Restart your computer when prompted.
3. The computer restarts in Safe mode.
4. Perform the troubleshooting steps for which you are using Safe Mode.
5. When you are finished with troubleshooting in Safe mode, open MSCONFIG again, on the BOOT.INI tab,  uncheck “/SAFEBOOT” and click OK to restart your computer in normal mode.

Using the System Configuration Utility for Windows Vista/Windows 7

1. Open up start menu > run, and type in msconfig and hit the enter key.
2. Select the Boot tab, and then check the box for “Safe boot” and make sure the radio button below is set to “Minimal”. Minimal is equivalent of the default safe mode in Advanced Options Menu.
   
3. After you press the OK button, you’ll be asked if you want to Restart now or wait until later. Press Restart now to restart your computer in safe mode immediately, or press wait until later, the next boot will take you into safe mode.
4. After starting into the safe mode, the “safe mode” text is placed corners of the screen,it also opens up the safe mode page from the help file in Windows 7 or Vista.

Note:  To Turn Safe Mode Back Off

Once you are done troubleshooting whatever you were working on, to turn safe mode off and go back to normal mode. Just open up msconfig the same way as above, and then on the Boot tab and uncheck the “Safe boot” checkbox.

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]]> http://www.optimize-your-pc.org/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/feed 0 http://www.optimize-your-pc.org/error-code-0x8007f0f4-for-windows-xp-service-pack-3-kb936929?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=error-code-0x8007f0f4-for-windows-xp-service-pack-3-kb936929 http://www.optimize-your-pc.org/error-code-0x8007f0f4-for-windows-xp-service-pack-3-kb936929#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 07:05:29 +0000 admin http://www.optimize-your-pc.org/?p=354 “The Windows Installer service could not be accessed” error message when installing Office
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]]> Windows XP Service Pack 3 (KB936929) problem

Windows XP Service Pack 3 installation fails with an error message, and the following
error is logged in the service pack (SBS2003) installation log: “8007F0F4 -
STATUS_PREREQUISITE_FAILED“

How to resolve KB936929 problem?

Download the Quick Fix tools above, once you have done that, run it, let it find the problem and fix it. To fix it manually, follow the instructions below,

Step 1: Remove current installation of xp Service 3 install, if you have any. If not, go to Step 2.

Use the “Add or Remove Programs” item in Control Panel

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. Copy and then paste the following command in the Open box, and then press ENTER:
   appwiz.cpl
3. Click to select the Show Updates check box.
4. Click Windows XP Service Pack 3, and then click Remove.
5. Click Finish to restart the computer after the removal process is complete.

Step 2: Things to do before downloading and installing Xp Service 3 Update.

1. Make sure the laptop battery is on AC power.

2. Make sure your system is clean from viruses, spyware and other malwares.

3. Make sure to defrag your windows partition before installing service 3.

4. Then take a image backup (almost all backup tools can take an image backup) of that partition to an external hard disk.

5. Turn off any real time protection – firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware programs.

6. Go to Step 3.

These are the things you must do before installing Xp Service pack 3.

Step 3: Install Xp service 3 from the Microsoft Download Center.

Download the latest Windows XP service pack from the Microsoft Download Center

If you have problems obtaining the service pack from Windows Update, you can download the stand-alone update package from the Download Center. However, you can safely download this file. The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:

Download the Windows XP Service Pack 3 package from Microsoft Download Center.

Step 4: Run the installation.

Before you do that, make sure to,

1. Have Xp Service 2 installed prior to it.

2. The Laptop is in AC power Mode.

3. Firewall, Antivirus and AntiSpyware real time protection is turned off.

4. Have enough space in Windows partition drive, C:\ by default.

5. Run the installation!

Overtime your PC slows down. Or it is already slowing down. Slow starting up or shutting down. Applications take long time to open. Even sometimes you hear the hard drive making noises. Despite having the latest Windows with all update fixes, constant crud inducing habits such as installing and uninstalling of programs can make your PC sluggish.

I am in this article going to talk about how to clean it up without having to reformat your hard disk or reinstall Windows or doing anything to overhaul it from the scratch. But simple fixes that takes the crud out of your computer and prevent those cluttering habits here on.

Why PC slows down? Possible Hardware issues and fixes.

• Over heating of processor:

  Problem	Solution
  Cooler fans that’s mounted on processor gets dust and slows down. This heats up the processor. Upon reaching certain temperature set in the BIOS, the system slows down.	To fix this, make sure the fan is clean. Take your laptop or terminal to service center, and ask them to clean up all the dust. You can do this yourself if you have previously opened your terminal or laptop.

• Hard drive failures from bad sectors:

  Problem	Solution
  Over time, hard disk starts to develop bad sectors  (Sectors are small data units on hard disk), from frequent data usage. In that case the new data are automatically copied to free or good sectors. But this wont happen exactly as is, the data might end up on bad sectors resulting in the failure of that data. As the drive starts to fail, this would then happen often.	To fix this, turn on SMART features in the BIOS  to let the SMART diagnose alert the failure immediately. In addition to that, benchmark tools such as Fresh Diagnose or Aida64 (previously known as Everest) helps to run results of your system hardware and know its current status to easily determine whether to carry on with it or buy a new one.

Why Windows slows down with use? Tracking down and cleaning out the crud.

Moving on to Windows itself now. There are three main causes that stems with the long time usage of Windows. Those are Cluttered up Windows Registry, multiple copies of program associated library files, back ground services and tasks, and fragmented hard drive. As you install and uninstall more programs, the Registry gets ballooned up, as well as creating a lot of junk and associated library files, such as the DLL files and as well as making the hard disk more fragmented. Now lets talk about these issues one by one.

• Windows Registry:

  Problem

  Solution

  Windows registry is a database where windows stores application install and configuration settings, hardware settings etc… Installing and uninstalling program, overtime can balloon up the size of registry. The size of it is about more than a quarter of my memory on my PC here, which is about 425 MB of registry database itself. Larger application like Anti Virus, Video Players stores its data on multiple location in the Registry. Added to that, incomplete uninstallation never totally clean sweep the registry off its obsolete data. This makes retrieving the needed data from the registry harder, as a result application takes long time to load.

  To fix this, as opposed to what other computer professionals believe in, I tend use registry cleaner and it works pretty well for me. Windows registry is a complicated database, but that doesn’t necessarily mean  computer vision or Artificial intelligence cannot put the maintenance of registry on automation to atleast some extent. An automated registry maintenance involves, complete backup of entire Windows registry and associate a system restore point, before performing its operation on it. It can clear up obsolete entries left by uninstallation of programs, duplicated and invalid entries with ease. This ensure clearing up of atleast 50-150 MB. In addition to that it can defragment Registry Hives (the parts of registry).

• Junk background services and task :

  Problem

  Solution

  Installing programs often also adds more to the background services. You can check how many background services that are running by going to Start > Run > services.msc and take a look at a list of services that are Enabled. In addition to background services, also the ones that run during system start up in the memory. This can be a problem when that particular program takes more memory or CPU. You can check the system start up list by going to Start > Run > msconfig.

  To fix this, Soluto can help you with the community-driven data. Soluto lets you turn off unwanted start up programs and background windows services and speeds up boot time. Also you could go to taskmanager (Start > Run > taskmgr) or Windows Resource Monitor (Start > Run > resmon) and monitor the cpu and memory usage. Shutdown the program that is not currently necessary. I personally use Process Explorer which shows processes in a tree view and has a lot of options. You could as well defragment page file or the virtual memory with PageDefrag. This enables quick access of data in page file and hence a little faster system.

• Fragmented Hard disk:

  Problem	Solution
  Over the time with creation and deletion of files and programs, the hard disk becomes fragmented. When the hard disk is almost full that swapping memory on to it (for page file or virtual memory) becomes an issue, the system slows down.	To fix this, run disk clean up tool, by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Make sure you only delete the temporary files, and not the system restore point or shadow copy files. Also don’t compress unused system files. Defragment fragmented hard disk. Run this when you don’t need much system use, as defragmenting will keep your system busy and hence slow.

Now that you have seen how easy it is to clear out the crud from your PC, lets talk about how to prevent it from happening again, and totally avoid reformatting hard disk or reinstalling windows to get back that new PC again.

Steps to maintaining a clean PC.

1. When installing a new program, see if the application has an advanced option. Make sure to use it. You could set the location to install, choose what components and extra utilities to install, and as well turn off running at system startup or quick launch setup if you don’t want.
2. Use Soluto with msconfig and services.msc to turn off unwanted background services and program running on memory at system start up.
3. Use disk cleanup tool to clean temporary internet and installation files.
4. Auto schedule disk defragment to run once a week.
5. Make sure to not install any browser addons as that might install malwares and crudwares.
6. Defrag Registry and clean it up with a registry cleaner tool.

Recommended third party tools (5 options).

1. registry cleaner
2. Aida64
3. Soluto
4. Process Explorer
5. PageDefrag

click on the image for full screen view.

NTFS file system can get corrupted because of,

• Corrupt ntfs.sys file
• Damaged hard drive data
• Damaged NTFS file system
• Corrupt SCSI or IDE drivers (hard drive component).

Steps to resolve this problem:

If windows still loads:

If you are able to still get the windows load, before repairing it, make sure to disable all the background services, antivirus scanners, or any malware monitors that are running on the taskmanage/taskbar. Also close the disk defragmenter that are scheduled to run.

Now, run the hardware diagnostic tool, to do that, click Start, click Run, type hwinfo /ui and then click OK.This shows the details of hard disk problem.

You can then run, disk scan, to do that, click Start, click Run, type chkdsk /r and then click OK. This is will repair file system damages.

If windows doesn’t load:

You can access your NTFS partition, using a NTFS boot USB or floppy. To create a booting USB or floppy, download a free program called NTFS4DOS from here, http://www.optimize-your-pc.org/files/ntfsinst.exe

You now have a bootable USD or floppy drive. It must boot the PC up. You see a welcome screen with 3 options to choose from. choose option 1. Type chkdsk/r in the command prompt, to repair the bad NTFS partition.

Remove the USB or floppy and restart the PC. The problem should be resolved now.

There is a thin chance that you cant repair on severe corruption, leaving you with data loss. The only way is to remove the Hark drive from your PC and repartition on another computer, and then running a data recovery tool to see if you can recover some data.

Hopefully, your problem wont be this severe if you have a well maintained PC with regular disk scans, defragmentation and antivirus/antispyware scans. Its also must to have a reliable Registry Optimizer Tool in your maintenance tool arsenal, to take care of registry health as well.

Process Explorer, shows the break down of sub process, showing memory usage of each one, helping you find what actually accounts for more of the overall memory usage of the process.

If in any case you are not aware of a particular sub process, google it to see if its a spyware and fix it.

Click on the image for full screen view. To get an interface like what you see in this image, in the Process Explorer, go View > Select Columns>Process memory tab. Check “Working set size”. Click OK. This will now show RAM/memory usage. Then, in main window, look for “System” process. Expand it, so sub processes are shown.

As you can see from the image above, the problem lies with the svchost.exe while i was expecting AVG module, avgwdsvc.exe to be the culprit. In that case, uninstalling AVG and reinstalling the latest version seldom helps. Looking for an alternative such as Avast or even better a paid one such as Kaspersky helps.

After examining, it seems that svchost should be a process on its own and in some cases it gets nested under system when sub process of svchost accessing that of system.

Researching more, shows that avdwdsvc.exe which is known as AVG Watchdog, a service that monitors other AVG components, to be examined. As expected the problem lies here. Seems like there is a memory leak, ie. more memory usage.

To fix this disable AVG watch dog service. To do that, go Start Button > Run > type services.msc. Find the service ‘AVG8 Watch Dog’, right click on it, click disable. Exit and reboot. By then the problem must be solved if not uninstall AVG.

To prevent high memory usage of processes, its must to have a reliable Registry Optimizer Tool, in addition to a firewall, antispyware and antivirus program. This is because, after a spyware fix, its must to clean its remnant, to avoid invalid registry entries slowing down your PC.

A user32.dll file is a part of Windows User API (Application Programming Interface). Its one of those files that interact between users inputs (from the programs) and windows OS. Most of the programs depend on this file. So its dangerous to remove this.

To fix the problem related to User32.dll, the following steps help,

1. Turn on windows automatic update. If you haven't already, click the start button, click Run, type sysdm.cpl, click Automatic Updates tab and choose "Automatic (recommended) Automatically download recommended updates for my computer and install them" and click ok.
    
2. If there is an User32.dll error after installing a program or hardware driver, uninstall that program and reboot your PC. Maybe there is a fault with that program or driver and you need to install the latest version of it.
    
3. If above steps failed, problem lies with the User32.dll file itself. Get a Windows OS CD that you installed your current version of windows with. Open the CD drive folder, navigate to i386 folder, and find User32.dl_. Copy that somewhere temporarily and rename it to User32.dll. Copy that now to C:\Windows\System32 folder, when prompted to rewrite that, hit ok.
   • If your prefer using recovery console, in case when you are unable to boot the PC. Insert the Windows OS CD, xp or vista or windows 7, whatever you have installed. Select the right booting if you have multiple boots. Enter password when prompted. A blank password for the windows xp home edition. When the welcome screen appears type R to start Recovery console. At the command prompt type, expand [CD ROM DRIVE]:\i386\user32.dl_ c:\windows\system32. CD ROM DRIVE is the drive letter for cd rom. In my PC its J:\. Type Exit, hit enter and restart the PC, remove the CD Rom for the normal boot.

This must do it for you. If not, you can use system restore to a point closer to today's point. Also i recommend that you clean the mess off your PC's registry using a Registry Optimizer Tool to keep your PC's health in good condition, in addition to of course, antivirus, antispyware and disk tool checkups.

1. The first step is to clean and defragment your hard disk. Go to Start menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools, run Disk cleanup and then Disk Defragment. This should clean up all the unwanted files and fragment your disk into healthy disk sectors by killing all the bad sectors on your hard disk.
2. Make sure to update and schedule your Antivirus and Antispyware to run regularly, atleast 2 times a week!
3. Likewise, invest in a registry cleaner. Update and schedule scan periodically atleast once a day. This will keep the windows registry clean and compact.

If any of the above methods did not work out, we have to find the source of the problem that causes the system freezes. Let’s talk about that now…

There are 3 main causes that a system freezes,

1. Too many start up programs.
2. Monitor display problems.
3. Device driver conflicts.

The remedy,

1. Too many start up programs:

You might have observed that when you install a new program like yahoo messenger or lime wire, it automatically is set to startup during every PC startup. Too many programs running during the startup overload your computer. Keep it less than 10 – 15. You can choose which program you want to run during a PC startup by going to Start menu > Run > Type ‘msconfig’ without quotes. Navigate to startup tab and uncheck the programs that you don’t want to run on PC startup.

2. Monitor display problems:

This is when your monitor shows a black screen or “signal out of range” message immediately upon PC startup. This is because your display resolution is set too much than what your monitor can handle. The remedy is to reboot your computer, then keep pressing F8, and in the boot menu, choose safe mode startup. Once the desktop is ready, right click anywhere on the screen and click Properties > Settings Tab. Change the monitor resolution to lower enough for it to work. You can sense it, if you don’t get any warning that it won’t work. If you don’t get that message you are good to go!  Generally 1280 by 800 pixels is ok! If you don’t have that 1024 by 768 pixels is good enough. Click apply and reboot again!

3. Device driver conflicts:

Sometimes your computer may not have the right device driver for its hardware. It might have an incompatible driver or completely outdated one. In that case, the fixing steps are, right click My Computer > Properties > Hardware Tab > Device Manager Button. If you see “yellow triangle with an exclamation mark on it” that means the device is not properly working – it doesn’t have a driver or the existing driver is corrupted. In that you need to put in the CD rom that came with the hardware and right click the fault device and install or update it. If you lost the CD rom, you can look for the appropriate device driver on the internet. Install that, and then your PC will be fine back again!