Absolute Beginners Guide to A+ Certification. Covers the Hardware and Operating Systems Exam

All versions of Windows covered on the A+ Certification Operating System Exam have troubleshooting tools you can use to determine why an installation isn't working properly. The following sections discuss how to use these tools and methods .

General Installation Troubleshooting

Two of the major problems that can prevent you from completing an installation include

• Hardware conflicts ” Change the hardware resource settings on legacy (non-PnP) hardware to values that don't interfere with PnP devices, or remove them for reinstallation later.

• Not enough disk space ” To ensure that you can complete the installation, make sure the partition you will use for installing Windows has at least the recommended minimum free disk space.

Troubleshooting the Windows 9x/Me Installation

The four files that provide valuable clues to why a Windows 9x/Me installation or initial startup has failed are

• Detlog.txt

• Netlog.txt

• Setuplog.txt

• Bootlog.txt

All these files are hidden files stored in the root folder of the Windows installation drive (normally C:\). Change the default settings in the Windows Explorer to Show All Files to display these files. You can examine the contents of these files with either Notepad or WordPad.

If Windows 9x/Me fails to complete its installation, a very long file called Detlog.txt can be used to figure out what happened . Detlog.txt lists the hardware devices that Windows is looking for. If the Windows 9x/Me upgrade process stops, the last entries in Detlog.txt indicate what was being checked at the time of the lockup , enabling you to remove or reconfigure the hardware that caused the installation to fail.

The Netlog.txt file records the network configuration of Windows 9x/Me during initial installation. If network devices do not work, examine this file to see if the end of any lines indicate error messages or error numbers .

Setuplog.txt is a file that records every event of the installation process. If the Windows 9x/Me installation process doesn't finish, check the end of the file to see at what point the installation failed.

An installation might appear to succeed, but it isn't really finished until the system restarts successfully. The Bootlog.txt file records every event during the startup process. Bootlog.txt is generated automatically the first time Windows 9x/Me is started; whenever a new Bootlog.txt is generated, the previous version is renamed Bootlog.prv (replacing any existing Bootlog.prv ). As with the other files discussed here, the end of the file is the critical location to look at if Windows can't start. Unlike other files, which are very complex to read, Bootlog.txt is relatively simple: Virtually every START event will have either a matching SUCCESS event, a FAILED event, or no match (if the system locks up after START ing an event). If Windows 9x/Me locks up, check the end of the file to determine the last driver or process that was START ed without a matching SUCCESS or FAILED ; that is the usual cause of the problem.

Troubleshooting a Windows NT/2000/XP Installation

Windows 2000/XP create various logfiles during installation and startup that can be used to determine if there were any problems encountered . Files marked with an asterisk (*) are also created by Windows NT 4.0 during installation. Most files are found in the root folder of the default Windows system drive.

• setuperr.log ” Records errors (if any) during installation; check this one first if an installation fails.

• setuplog.txt ” Records events during the text-mode portion of installation.

• setupapi.log* ” Records events triggered by an .inf file (typically used for hardware installation) from original installation (top of file) to present (bottom of file).

• setupact.log ” Logs all events created by the GUI-mode setup program (including updates to the system). This file doesn't use internal data/timestamps, so you might want to make a copy of it as soon as you install Windows. It grows with subsequent installations of hotfixes, updates, and so forth.

• winnt32.log or winnt.log ” Created during installation by the corresponding program. By default, lists warnings (level 2), but you can change the level information it stores with the /debug: level switch. Windows NT 4.0 creates similar $winnt.log files with the /l switch.

• ntbtlog.txt* ” Logs drivers installed during a Safe Mode boot or when bootlog is chosen as a startup option.

These files are all stored in plain-text mode, so they can be viewed with a text editor. Use the methods listed in the previous section for interpreting these files.

tip

If Windows NT/2000/XP is installed on a FAT16 or FAT32 drive, you can start the computer with a Windows 9x/Me boot disk and copy these files to a floppy disk for viewing on another system. If Windows 2000/XP is installed on an NTFS drive, you can use the Windows boot disks or CD to start the system, launch the Recovery Console, and view the files with the More command: More setuplog.txt displays the contents of the Setuplog.txt file.