| How to Stop Your Computer from Crashing on Startup & Preventing Crashes |
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Is your computer crashing before it can even get up and running? This happens for several reasons. If you’ve recently installed a new device driver or software, your computer may start having problems crashing during the boot up routine or just shortly after. Computers also crash at startup when other processes are robbing it of resources or causing conflicts. Other reasons computers crash is when the disk drive is too full or failing.
Let’s tackle one thing at a time. First, if your computer is crashing on startup after an installation of software or device drivers, you can try loading the “Last Known Good Configuration.” To do this, reboot your computer and press the F8 key as it reboots. This launches the Windows Advanced Options menu. Your mouse won’t work at this point so use the computer’s arrow keys to select Last Known Good Configuration. This will load an earlier configuration (before the changes). From there, you can uninstall the offending program.
If you use System Restore points, you can go into System Restore by choosing Start, All Programs, Accessories, System, System Restore. You’ll be prompted to restore your system files and settings to a particular date. Choose a date that occurred before the changes were made. This only affects system files and settings, not documents and data.
If your computer is crashing and you haven’t recently made any changes, your crashing problems could be related to having too many applications loading and competing for resources. This could be applications that you have in your Startup folder or it could be spyware that you don’t even know about.
First, go to the Start button, choose Run, and type in “msconfig.” Click the Startup Items tab and see what programs are starting up each time you boot Windows. Chances are, you have many unnecessary programs launching each time. For example, you might have Adobe Reader, QuickTime, WinZIP, and Microsoft Excel all fully loading day in, day out. Do you use each of those applications daily? If not, remove them from your computer. Make sure to keep critical programs such as your anti-virus application enabled for Startup.
Next, invest in an anti-spyware software solution or download the Windows Defender application from Microsoft. Run a complete scan and remove any found spyware or adware applications. Run your anti-virus application, too
If your disk drive is at or near capacity, your computer’s performance will suffer. Sluggish performance, computer errors, and system crashes are all symptoms. This can happen if the disk is physically failing too. First, open My Computer and right-click your hard drive. Choose Properties to see a visual display of your hard drive’s free space. If it’s close to full, that’s a good part of your crashing computer problem. If it has plenty of free space, you can still benefit by running the Disk Cleanup utility. Click “Cleanup” and wait as the utility scans your computer for files suitable for immediate removal. Most of these will be temporary files and memory dump files which are doing nothing but taking up disk space. Once the list is populated, double check it to be sure you have check marks in the appropriate boxes and then click the “remove” option. This step should be part of your regular maintenance routine.
Preventing crashes is better than recovering from them. With prevention in mind, it’s important to run the tools such as Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter regularly. In addition, keep your computer protected against spyware and computer viruses. You should also periodically check your Startup items, especially if you install numerous applications.
Top pick for the best Driver Update Software:
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