10 Steps to Recover your PC

What do you do when your PC is behaving strangely and regular tools can't seem to find the problem? Here are ten simple steps, mostly using

what's already in your Windows to recover your PC to working condition

mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:

EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Your PC was fine a few moments ago and suddenly,

it is frozen or the Internet doesn't work. Your anti virus is running and a

scan finds nothing strange. How do you deal with the problem when every PC

technician around gives up and advises you to format your hard disk and

re-install everything? And before that, how do you find out what's wrong with

your system and fix it without trying to find a way around? We give you ten

simple steps (with three alternatives) to recover your Win XP or 2000 PC from

such a state to working condition.

"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;

mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">Depending on the version of Windows you have installed,

you should be able to "Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;

mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">perform most of these steps fairly easily. The first

step in troubleshooting is, of course, looking for the error message and

understanding what it means-if you can't make it out yourself, write it down

and ask someone who does. Secondly, keep a list of problems you faced and how

you solved them. Experience is the best teacher for the quickest solutions.

Boot in Safe Mode. Windows will not load any of its normal files. Drivers and system files loaded are a clean copy and viruses won't load up		Once in Safe Mode, open Start>Run and run 'msconfig'. Uncheck everything in the SYSTEM.INI, WIN.INI and Start Up tabs
In 'regedit' open 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Run'. Select and delete all the items		If you're not on XP, also open Start>Programs>Start Up and delete all items from it
If your Internet or particular sites are behaving unusually, type: 'notepad %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\drivers\etc\ hosts' in Start>Run and delete everything here		Reboot the PC and use it for some time to see if it's working normally. At this point, things like your messengers and AV will not load up
Scan the PC for viruses and adware with sites like http:// housecall.trendmicro.com or http://safety.live.com		Run 'sfc/scannow' to check system files for integrity. Have your XP install CD handy
Visit the Security Center and turn on your firewall, without any exceptions		In the 'Internet Properties' of IE, open its Options and set the security level to Medium for the Internet zone

Sujay V Sarma