Windows Vista Security: Praxisorientierte Sicherheit für Profis

Detecting and Resolving Computer Problems

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Throughout this book, you’ll find troubleshooting tips and tech-

niques for specific components, features, and applications as well.

Don’t overlook these additional resources in your troubleshooting. If

you have problems that you can’t resolve yourself and you are able to

load the operating system, you can also use Remote Assistance to get

help from other people, regardless of where they may be located. See

the “Getting Help and Giving Others Assistance” section, later in this

chapter, for details.

Solving the Tough Problems Automatically (and Sometimes with a

Little Help)

Windows Vista’s built-in diagnostics framework is designed to monitor the operat-

ing system and your computer’s hardware components. The diagnostics framework

has many components, including:

• Application compatibility alerts to warn you about possibly incompatible programs

• Disk fault monitoring to alert you about a disk that is failing and may need to be

replaced

• Corrupt file monitoring to detect and recover corrupted system files

• Memory leak detection to detect memory allocation problems caused by pro-

grams or components, and to automatically free memory

• Boot performance monitoring to detect and alert you about conditions that

affect startup

• Standby/resume performance monitoring to detect and alert you about condi-

tions that affect standby/resume

• Shutdown performance monitoring to detect and alert you about conditions that

affect shutdown

• System performance monitoring to detect and alert you about conditions that

affect system responsiveness

• Virtual memory monitoring to detect and alert you about low memory condi-

tions that affect system performance

All these diagnostics components work together to help ensure that your computer

runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible. The alerts and notifications these com-

ponents generate are displayed on the screen in dialog boxes and are recorded in the

event logs. While the alerts and notifications vary depending on the type of perfor-

mance problem, most alerts provide you with a diagnosis and a possible resolution.

For example, if your computer is running low on available virtual memory, you’ll see

the “Close programs to prevent information loss” dialog box. This dialog box will

alert you about the low memory condition and provide options for closing the big-

gest resource hogs to free up memory.

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Chapter 21: Getting Help and Handling Advanced Support Issues

With disk faults, hardware diagnostics alerts you about a disk that is failing and

helps guide you through the process of backing up your computer. Performance

problems addressed by built-in diagnostics include slow application startup, slow

boot, slow standby/resume, and slow shutdown. If a computer is experiencing

degraded performance, performance diagnostics can detect the problem and provide

possible solutions for resolving it.

Some of the more serious problems you may be alerted to are memory leaks and fail-

ing memory. Memory leaks are caused by applications or system components that

don’t free up memory they’ve previously allocated, and this can cause your com-

puter to run out of available memory. Failing memory can also be exceptionally diffi-

cult to troubleshoot. To detect system crashes possibly caused by failing memory,

memory diagnostics works with the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis tool. If your

computer crashes due to failing memory and memory diagnostics detects this, you

are prompted to schedule a memory test the next time the computer is restarted. If

you suspect that your computer has a memory problem, you can run Windows

Memory Diagnostics manually as well by completing these steps:

1. Click Start

➝ All Programs ➝ Accessories.

2. Right-click Command Prompt and then select Run As Administrator.

3. At the command prompt, type

mdsched.exe.

4. Choose whether to restart the computer and run the tool immediately or sched-

ule the tool to run at the next restart.

5. Windows Memory Diagnostics runs automatically after the computer restarts

and performs a standard memory test automatically. If you want to perform

fewer or more tests, press F1, use the Up and Down arrow keys to set the Test

Mix as Basic, Standard, or Extended, and then press F10 to apply the desired set-

tings and resume testing.

6. When testing is completed, the computer restarts automatically. You’ll see the

test results when you log on.

Built-in diagnostics is only one part of a comprehensive overhaul of the operating

system. Windows Vista:

• Prevents many common causes of hangs and crashes by using more reliable and

better performing device drivers. Improved input/output (I/O) cancellation for

device drivers ensures that there are fewer blocking disk I/O operations and that

Windows Vista can recover gracefully from any blocking calls that do occur.

• Reduces downtime and restarts required for application installations and

updates by marking in-use files for update and then automatically replacing the

files the next time the application is started. In some cases, Windows Vista can

save the application’s data, close the application, update the in-use files, and

then restart the application.