Chapter 2. Basic Vista Troubleshooting

What You’ll Learn

In this chapter, I’ll teach you:

• The ERIDA formula to troubleshooting and how it relates to dead frogs

• Cyberwalker’s five immutable laws of PC troubleshooting

• That you’re not insane—you just have to wait for a service pack

• How to get basic and advanced system information out of your computer

• Which system tools can help you learn more about your computer

• How useful and free system audit programs can help you

• Why an understanding of software versions is helpful in troubleshooting

How to Be a Vista Doctor

I watch a lot of the TV show House, the hit series starring Hugh Laurie, about a crotchety, but brilliant, doctor who troubleshoots the most difficult medical conditions and often brings near-death patients back from the brink of a dirt nap.

It’s the kind of doctor I said I’d become in Grade 3. It didn’t work out. I dropped out of organic chemistry in college and started hanging out with the miscreants at the school newspaper, all but dooming my parents’ hopes for a doctor in the family.

Skills and instinct intact, but without the requisite knowledge of human anatomy beyond what I discovered at high school dances, I ultimately became a pretty good diagnostician of technology. I’m not Ma and Pa Walker’s accomplished oncologist or gastroenterologist, but I am their techologist and their occasional techanic. You can be both of these too.

So, let me teach you what I have learned about diagnosing technology and how it can apply to Vista. I want you to be a techologist, as well as a Vista techanic, too.

Whether it’s fixing a car, a human, or a computer, being a good troubleshooter requires one fundamental skill. You need to first gather a lot of information about the troublesome system. And although Vista is seemingly pretty on its face, it is not particularly easy or logical to gather basic information about the health and status of the system without a bit of poking.

We have one advantage over Dr. House. His mantra is “patients lie.” Luckily, Vista doesn’t. You just have to poke rudely and lift its gown to really get an understanding of what’s going on under the surface.

So snap on your rubber gloves and ask your Vista computer to relax, because we’re going to do a little investigation into what’s really causing some of that grunting and groaning.

Cyberwalker’s Five Immutable Laws of PC Troubleshooting

Surprisingly, Vista problems—and really, most legacy Windows problems—are caused by one of four things:

• A hardware malfunction

• A software problem

• An operating system malfunction or misconfiguration

• You (that is, user error)

There are some immutable laws around these truisms. I named them after my website, Cyberwalker.com, and call them Cyberwalker’s Immutable Laws of Troubleshooting:

• Law #1: All computer problems are caused by a hardware problem, a software problem, an operating system malfunction or misconfiguration, or you. And chances are, it’s you.

• Law #2: Beyond user error, 80% of problems are software based, meaning that it involves the operating system (which is software) or third-party software (such as an installed application or driver). The nice thing about this rule is that 80% of problems are fixable with some troubleshooting know-how.

• Law #3: Difficult-to-diagnose problems manifest when at least two of Law #1’s conditions are present.

• Law #4: The remaining 20% of problems are hardware related and can be fixed with the 5R rule—reboot, reseat, reconnect, reconfigure, or replace.

• Law #5: This is a biggie. If you can’t figure it out after a lot of effort, blame Microsoft. Microsoft’s bugs are the X factor in troubleshooting. All you have to do is count the number of patches, fixes, and service packs issued for any Microsoft operating system to realize that some problems are unsolvable until Microsoft fixes a bug in the operating system.

If Microsoft Was NASA

And further to Law #5, if Microsoft was NASA, we’d have a lot more dead astronauts. The company has a bad track record of releasing shoddy code in half-finished products. It launches operating systems and applications that also have to be fixed after the fact.

Still, Microsoft employs some of the most brilliant programmers on the planet and does some very good work otherwise, although the Windows division appears to be badly managed. It shouldn’t take five years to get an operating system update to market (which, incidentally, is how long it took for Microsoft to move from XP to Vista).

At the root of this is a large organization with a bureaucracy and odd culture of arrogance (“Microsoft knows best”) that gets in the way of great results.

So here comes the pep talk. When you suffer from a problem that seems impossible to solve, don’t think you’re not smart enough or good enough or that you are going insane. Often the problem is not fixable by you. Microsoft or its partners will first have to solve the problem at the binary level to give you any relief.

If in Doubt, Wait for a Service Pack

There are two certainties in life: death and taxes. With computers, there’s one more: service packs.

Between the day Vista was released and the release of the eventual Vista Service Pack 1, you can expect a fair amount of heartache thanks to a fresh crop of bugs shipped in Vista. Unfortunately, Microsoft generally takes about a year to release service packs, so we’re on our own until then.

Of particular concern is the rewritten network stack (a multidecker sandwich of network programming) in Vista. With a mission to make Vista more secure, Microsoft rewrote the stack with fresh code. When they got their hands on it, researchers at Symantec started to gargle, and rightly so, over its potential instability and insecurity, despite Microsoft’s assertion that the new network stack is a better network stack than the one in XP.

My old pal Steve Gibson of GRC.com, one of the most boisterous security experts I know and longtime Microsoft critic, is also waving flags around this potential problem.

New code is often wormy, rife with security holes and flaws—and that means grief for end users like you and me.

After Service Pack 1 is released, Microsoft will inevitably release Vista Service Pack 2 two to three years out. It will include workarounds and renovations for most of the serious Vista design flaws and hopefully a battle-hardened network stack by then.

That’s what happened to Windows 95. The design flaw was connectivity to the emerging Internet. This was fixed with the release of Windows 98, and that was fixed by Windows 98 Second Edition.

Windows XP’s big flaw was its innately bad security. XP Service Pack 2 (see Figure 2.1) didn’t really repair the flaw. Instead, it barricaded the flaw, which was akin to building the Great Wall of China to keep ravenous monkeys out of a wind-fatigued banana shed.

Figure 2.1. Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Windows XP three years after XP shipped, making the malware-assaulted operating system as secure as it could be given its design flaws.

My predication: A similar design flaw will emerge in Vista. So far, it’s hard to say what that will be. It could be security. It could be networking. It might be something yet unforeseen, such as Internet connectivity, which took the Windows 95 team by surprise.

ERIDA Your Errors

Here is a formula approach to troubleshooting that you can pretty much apply to any troubleshooting routine on a computer. If you learn this technique, you should be able to diagnose almost any Vista problem, and really any Windows computer problem.

Here’s the magic formula:

• Evaluate

• Replicate

• Investigate

• Diagnose

• Act

Unfortunately, it spells ERIDA, which is not a very good mnemonic, but creepily is the goddess of hate in the Iliad.

Evaluate

The first thing you should do when you encounter an error or bad behavior on a computer is to do nothing and see whether it happens again. Computers do odd things, and luckily sometimes they never do them again. Now, if the problem occurs more than once, and with some frequency, pay attention. Keep track of the following:

• When did it happen?—Make a note of the time of day and the date.

• Under what circumstances?—Was it during regular usage? On startup of Windows or a specific program? On shutdown of Windows or a program? During a specialty task such as printing or checking email?

• What’s the system’s recent history?—Have you changed anything recently? Added a new peripheral, system hardware add-on, or Internet service? Installed new software? Run a Windows update? Updated a driver? Do you have a teenager who has been using it a lot lately? Does your cleaning lady have new Photoshop skills?

• Has the physical environment changed?—Have environmental or physical conditions around the computer changed? Airflow? Change of temperature? Increased moisture? Has the computer been moved? Is there raisin bran in the optical drive? (See Figure 2.2.)

Figure 2.2. Is there raisin bran in your optical drive? It could be a clue.

Replicate

Next, try to replicate the error. Attempt to cause the problem using a step-by-step routine that you can repeat. Repeatable errors are great because they can help you isolate a problem quickly. Here are the basic steps:

1. Itemize the steps that you took to create the error.

2. Keep a log of those steps so that you can refer to it later.

3. If you can make the problem occur on demand by repeating the steps, you’re on track to solve it easily. Move on to the next section where I’ll help you investigate the cause of the problem.

Investigate

The next step is to investigate further by attempting to repeat the error. Let’s use an example. If your web browser crashes after you click a link in email, investigate as follows. Chronicle the steps that cause the error, like this:

• Step 1: Start the computer.

• Step 2: Connect to the Internet (or confirm a connection).

• Step 3: Open the email program.

• Step 4: Open a particular email.

• Step 5: Click a link in the email.

• Step 6: Allow your default browser to open and load the page.

• Result: A browser crash occurs before the page loads.

Investigate this by changing your default browser from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox. Test it again.

If the result is that the page on the Web opens fine, you know the problem is with Internet Explorer.

If the result is that the page crashes, either there is a problem clicking from within your email program or the HTML programming in the web page is faulty.

The next step is to try different processes, such as the following:

• Use a different web link in the same email message (if there is one).

• Cut the address from the email and paste or type it into the web browser directly.

• Check to make sure the Internet connection is still connected or that the firewall is not blocking the connection.

If at First You Don’t Succeed...

If the problem is not immediately obvious or is difficult to replicate, do more investigation:

• Look for troublemakers—Scan for viruses and spyware with security tools. Use more than one spyware application and swap out your antivirus program for another brand (AVG from free.grisoft.com is a free alternative) to test whether your AV program is missing something.

• Use troubleshooters—Use Windows automatic troubleshooters to see whether it has answers for you. Although not foolproof, these are a major new feature in Vista.

• Check Vista help—Don’t discount Vista’s built-in help files. They’re better than ever. Click the Windows button, Help, and Support. Specifically, look at the troubleshooting section to see whether one of the categories there fits your problem.

• Gather key system information—Take stock of your system and its specifications and compare it to the minimum system requirements and specifications provided by software and hardware makers to check for compatibility.

Diagnose

This is a good time to stop and look for answers. As my pal Gary Marriott, who is from Ipswitch, England, puts it: “Have a good think about it.” Step back and rethink everything you have done. Look for patterns and clues, review the steps you have taken, and try to come up with a plan.

It’s a simple part of the process and yet the hardest step to get past. Sometimes you have to go back and evaluate, replicate, and investigate again. The next bit, though, is the most fun.

Act

After you have a plan, or just stuff to try, you can start to do something about the problem and use your neck-supported melon to see whether you can fix the problem.

In our email example, if the problem seems to be related to the browser, see whether an update is available. If it’s an Internet or firewall connection, try to remedy it. If it’s a security issue in your email client that won’t let you click a link and open a browser, look in the email program’s help file to see whether there is a way to turn off that feature.

But What If I Get Stuck?

If you’re stuck here, you can take several generic actions:

• Update stuff—That means related drivers, Windows patches (through Windows Update), and third-party software applications if available. Update firmware, which is software on chips inside devices. Routers have firmware, as do outboard peripheral devices such as optical drives (CD-ROM and DVD drives). Look for BIOS updates. The system BIOS is firmware on a dedicated memory chip that provides settings and configurations for the system hardware. Sometimes a BIOS update, available from your computer or motherboard manufacturer, fixes odd crashes and hardware failures.

• Search for errors—Make notes of errors (transcribe exact wording) and type them into the Microsoft support area, into the support area of manufacturers of any suspect devices or peripherals, and also into Google.com. Put the whole error or significant portions of the message between quotes and paste it into Google like this (see Figure 2.3):

"Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL"

Figure 2.3. Transcribe Windows error messages and plug them into Google. You’ll often find out more about what causes them and hopefully how to fix them.

• Reconfigure and remove—Change settings; destroy and re-create hardware profiles, setups, and connection settings; and pare down, remove, reinstall, or turn off potential disruptive applications and hardware or cleanse malware.

• Reinstall and reformat—A last resort that can be used to fix really ornery problems is to wipe the machine and start fresh by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling. It’s an extreme measure that can take a whole day, but it’s one way to eliminate updates you have made to the system, including fixes, patches, drivers, applications, and even malware. I show you how to do this starting on p. 119 (see Chapter 5, “Preparation and Backup”).

This puts the system back to the way it was on day one, when it first arrived from the store. If it still has problems, it’s likely your problem is hardware related.

If you’re really clever (and patient and perhaps delirious at this point), also take out any hardware upgrades, including RAM, USB devices, and add-on cards such as NICs or video cards, and replace them with the originals, if applicable. This is not always practical, but fastidious troubleshooters will sometimes do anything to find a solution to a nasty problem.

Good Computer Doctors Gather Information

One of the keys to successful troubleshooting—especially if you hit a roadblock—is to gather as much information as possible before you attempt a fix.

I am going to show you how to take stock of your Vista computer and gather some critical system information that will help you with your troubleshooting.

Ironically, along the way, you may see some obvious places where Vista has gone wrong and be able to fix the problem simply by recognizing that something about your system is not quite right.

If you start to do this, feel good about yourself because it’s a sign of an intuitive troubleshooter who is starting to become proficient. If you don’t, keep trying. The beauty of this process is that expertise comes with effort and persistence. But I am getting ahead of myself here.

So let’s get started and gather some basic system information about your Vista computer.

Out of the box, when you first log on to Vista, you will be presented with the Welcome Center. It’s kind of like Vista’s tourist information booth, but without the big-hair lady behind the counter wearing a sweatshirt with kittens on it.

If you have turned off this feature, access it as follows:

1. Click the Windows button.

2. In the Search box on the Start bar, type Welcome.

3. When the Welcome Center link appears in the Start menu, click it to open it (see Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4. The Vista Welcome Center provides some useful system info, as well as a liberal smattering of Microsoft advertising innocently disguised as helpful information.

4. By default, your computer details appear in the top frame. If not, click View Computer Details.

At the top of the Welcome Center window—or after you click View Computer Details—your version of Vista will be listed. It will be one of the following:

• Windows Vista Starter 2007

• Windows Vista Home Basic

• Windows Vista Home Premium

• Windows Vista Business

• Windows Vista Enterprise

• Windows Vista Ultimate

Knowing your Vista version will allow you to figure out why some Vista features may be missing from your computer. Vista Ultimate (see Figure 2.5) will have all features enabled; Vista Starter won’t. And all versions in between have varying feature sets. For example, Vista Starter and Vista Home Basic do not have the new, sexy (though some may say “resource-wasting”) Aero interface. So knowing which version of Vista you have would stop you from wasting time trying to turn on Aero when you have Home Basic. That said, most consumers will end up with either Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate (see Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5. Most consumers will use either Vista Home Premium or the fully loaded Vista Ultimate.

Below the version, you’ll see the make, model, and speed of the processor and the amount of system RAM detected on your computer. Below that, you’ll see the make and model of your graphics card.

It’s handy to have this information to compare it against minimum specifications on software packages. So, for example, you know that the latest version of Microsoft Flight Simulator will work on your system.

The Devil Is in the Details

To the far right of the system information is a button that says Show More Details. Be sure to click it. It gives you loads more info about your system (see Figure 2.6) that can be useful in a troubleshooting process.

Figure 2.6. The Show More Details button on the Welcome Center leads you to this screen that tells you lots of useful information about your system, including your Windows Experience Index.

System

In the System section, you’ll see a number next to Rating. This is called the Windows Experience Index. It’s a new Windows feature that gives you a rough idea of a system’s overall capability. The rating is made up of scores created by Vista tests to various components including processor, memory, graphics, gaming graphics, and primary hard disk.

The lowest score of the weakest component (see Figure 2.7) is the assigned overall rating for your system. The good news is if the component that is holding back the system can be upgraded, and therefore result in an improved score, the whole system benefits, and the score will be upgraded.

Figure 2.7. Vista calculates that memory on this Dell system (a powerful Dimension 9150) is holding it back. So adding RAM would improve the overall Windows Experience Index of the system.

The rating can be matched against software titles that use the scoring system on their boxes or in online software stores such as windowsmarketplace.com. It’s a clever idea. Whether it will have widespread adoption remains to be seen, however. But if you’re out buying software, be sure that you note your Windows Experience rating as it may come in handy, especially when buying system-intensive applications such as games.

The Computer Name, Domain, and Workgroup Settings section provides information useful for identifying your system on a home network. The most useful of these is the computer name.

When you browse a home or office network, the computer name will help you recognize one computer from another. The workgroup and domain identify clusters of computers in larger groups or sections of a larger network in a similar way that a state, city, and street address identifies a home in the U.S.

The Windows Activation area shows the Product ID number associated with your computer, and that verifies that your machine’s copy of Vista is licensed and legal. It’s assigned to a computer after the product key (the code you type in when you activate a copy of Vista) activates your Windows license.

This tells you that you have a legal copy of Windows Vista installed on your system and can be used to verify your license if it is called into question. You can also change the product key here and, therefore, the license. This can be used if your system refuses to activate your license and you get annoying messages from Microsoft.

Fonzie Says: SIT on It

If you want to show off in front of your geek friends, the ultimate information-gathering tool used by the top 100 system administrators in the SysAdmin’s Hall of Fame is the SIT or System Information Tool (see Figure 2.8).

Figure 2.8. The System Information Tool provides way more information about your system than you can ever use. It’s particularly useful for figuring out what components and drivers are attached to your computer.

Launch SIT as follows: Click the Windows button, type msinfo32, and press Enter.

SIT displays three categories of information, as follows:

• Hardware Resources—These include advanced details on the hardware at a level that is usually a little too detailed for anyone beyond operating system developers to make use of. However, it can reveal components attached to your motherboard with their makes and models that would otherwise be difficult to find.

• Components—This is highly useful because it shows disk drives, sound devices, and other components that are installed, as well as their driver names, versions, and file locations (really valuable).

• Software Environment—This displays information about drivers, network connections, and other program-related details. It also contains a list with the history of devices that have been installed on your computer. In addition, it can prove to be useful in diagnosing issues as well. For example, Startup Programs shows you applications and Windows components that automatically start when Windows boots. This can be useful to spot memory hoggers as well as spyware and viruses.

From Despair to Freeware

Several good system advisor tools, available on the Internet, can provide insight into your system, and they are free.

Vista Upgrade Advisor

The Vista Upgrade Advisor is a handy tool that provides a quick snapshot of information about your system, including the status of any problems. It’s designed to evaluate whether an older machine is Vista-ready, but it can also be used after the fact to diagnose driver problems and learn about any incompatibilities between software programs and hardware components and Vista (see Figure 2.9).

Figure 2.9. The Vista Upgrade Advisor can be used as an information-gathering tool as well as a utility to sniff out potential problems with software and hardware compatibility.

The Vista Upgrade Advisor can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeadvisor/default.mspx or http://tinyurl.com/o5bq4.

Belarc Advisor

Another fun application (well, fun to you and me) that provides a good system snapshot and overview of your hardware and installed software is the Belarc Advisor. It’s a free utility available from http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html.

The Belarc Advisor audits your computer and returns a report on your system’s installed software, hardware, Windows updates/hotfixes, antivirus status, and many other details on your system (see Figure 2.10). I especially like that it tells you what system RAM is installed and whether there are any open slots on the machine without having to crack open the computer’s case.

Figure 2.10. The Belarc Advisor provides deep and detailed data on a Windows computer, including the size of RAM chips and RAM slots occupied.

What Version Is It?

Clever troubleshooters know that if you can update a program, driver, or software that is giving you trouble, it can be a good option to solve a problem that perhaps won’t go away.

First, though, you have to know what version you have. The version number of the software is available in the program using one of a few common places. If the program splashes up a title page when it starts up, you may see the version there. But the best place to seek it out is usually in the Help menu, which is typically on the right side of the menu bar across the top of most program windows. Sometimes, it is called “About.”

Microsoft puts its version numbers in the Help menu under an item called About program name.

For example, in Outlook 2003, the Help menu item with version information is called About Microsoft Office Outlook (see Figure 2.11).

Figure 2.11. The About page in Microsoft Outlook 2003 is found under the Help menu and is called, oddly, About Microsoft Office Outlook.

The information you want is the official name and version of the product and then the build number if available. The build number is usually a number such as this:

3.01

But sometimes like this:

3.12

Here’s a breakdown of that:

In the example, the first number—3—is the release number, or how many times the product has gone through a major update.

The next bit—.12—shows that a minor release has been issued with a minor version update. If it says .01, that indicates a really minor update, and .1 would be a fairly substantial revision, but not a full generation of the product.

Then you might see Microsoft’s way of doing it (see Figure 2.12):

11.8010.8036

Figure 2.12. The version number is often found in the About entry in the Help menu. In this copy of Microsoft Outlook 2003, it’s 11.8010.8036.

Microsoft’s first number on the left is the generation of the software. The next one to the right is the build number. Every day (or week) programmers compile (or process the program code into a working copy) to see how it runs. Thousands of builds can be generated throughout a product’s development, so the build number can be quite large in some cases.

The last part in my example, 8036, could be a sub-build. Perhaps the program was compiled for different uses or markets.

This combined version number, in whatever incarnation, is helpful in comparing your copy of the software to the latest copy being offered by the software publisher. If the company’s number is larger than yours, a new version is available.

Table 2.1 shows how to read how the version number and will help you decide whether you need to upgrade.

Table 2.1. Deciphering Program Version Numbers