System
When your computer gets infected, locks up during a procedure, fails during an installation or you encounters a driver or hardware problem, then you may need to get your hands into the engine to see what's going on. Here are a range of tools that are available on Windows XP or the internet that will help you resolve your problems.
MsConfig:
This module allows you to modify the system start up, also allowing you to disable programs or services. The easiest way of using this is to be logged in with Administration rights.
For Windows 2000, you will need to install it by following this tip.
Accessible from: Start – Run, tpe: msconfig and press enter.
The panel will contain 6 tabs:
General: Allows you to choose the start up mode.
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Normal Start up: Loads the peripheral drivers, programs and services. This is the default mode if no changes are made in msconfig.
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Diagnostic mode: This corresponds to the startup mode selected by pressing F8 and choosing network connection.
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Selective: Loads drivers, services and programs that you choose with the options listed below. This corresponds to the following tabs in Windows.
System.ini and Win.ini: These 2 tabs are related to the system.ini and win.ini files. These are here to help with compatibility for older Windows applications. Under XP, they don’t actually do much. For those of you that are familiar with these don’t forget the sysedit tool under Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. You can still use both of these under XP.
Boot.ini: This tab is related to the boot.ini file, hidden in the root of the disk. This tells the PC which OS to load. Boot.ini is indispensable, so you should be careful when making changes to it. Each time that you select or unselect a start up option then the boot.ini is changed. In the line: multi(0) disk(0)….. /fastdetect is the default option.
Fastdetect: Prevents the detection of a serial port mouse (/fastdetect = [COM1]). If you need to use this device on the serial port then you should activate this option (very rare).
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Safeboot: Loads in safe mode
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Noguiboot: Disabled the Windows XP opening screen.
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Bootlog: Creates a txt file in the root of the disk. You will need to read this in the event of a failure.
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Basevideo: Loads the video card drivers in standard VGA mode.
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Sos: The system responsible for loading the drivers. You can also see if there are any problems during the boot.
Advanced Options:
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Maxmem: This allows you to specify an amount of memory (RAM) that is smaller then what is really installed: /maximum=64
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Numproc: Allows you to choose the number of processors to use.
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Pcilock: When you install a card in the PCI bus, Windows will update your configuration settings. Activated and this option will prevent XP from dynamically assigning the interrupts (IRQ) for the PCI cards, leaving the BIOS to manage.
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Debug: Sends debugging information to a remote PC when using a serial connection.
Services: Displays the state of the system services. The Hide all Windows Services option will not show the state of services that are created by programs that you have installed.
Startup: Displays the processes that are responsible for the opening of your session. Often malware will install themselves here allowing them to load with the computer.
We can also see these with a right click on the task bar and select: Properties and click on the Processes tab.
The processes are “written” in the registry in the following 3 keys:
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
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HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices
Once the changes have been completes then you can press OK and close.
The next time you open your Windows session you will see a message warning you that the MsConfig configuration has been changed. Select “Don’t show this window again”.
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