XP Startup Issues - Removing all Third-Party Drivers

In rare cases, you may be unable to determine which third-party driver is causing a startup error. To troubleshoot this issue, move all third-party driver files from the Windows\System32\Drivers folder to a different location. To do this, follow these steps:

Use the Recovery Console to start the computer, or start the computer from a different installation of Windows if you have performed a parallel Windows installation.
Move all files from the Windows\System32\Drivers folder that do not have a creation date for Windows XP of 8/13/2001. If the computer relies on a third-party IDE or SCSI controller driver for correct operation, you must identify those driver files, and then leave them in the Windows\System32\Drivers folder.
Restart the computer.
Continue the Windows Setup program.

For more information about how to disable a service that prevents Windows from starting, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310602

Comments

Where are SCANPST.EXE and/or SCANOST.EXE?

I sometimes have to deal with customer computers whose Outlook PST or OST files have become corrupted. Very often the fix is to run SCANPST.EXE on the offending PST/OST file. However, every time I go to do this I forget where the two executable files are. Here is where they are on a Vista machine running Office 2007: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12 I hope this helps.

WSUS Issues

Was configuring WSUS on a Server 2016 VM for a customer recently and found the performance to be very sluggish and most of the time the client PCs would time-out and throw an error message when trying to check for updates. After much digging on different forums I came across a fix that worked nicely: Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and click on Application Pools Then Right-Click on your WsusPool instance and choose Advanced Settings Scroll down to Private Memory Limit (KB) and change it from the default of 1843200 to 0 which means unlimited. Then right-click and stop the WsusPool and then start it again. Hope this works for you.

APC PowerChute Network Shutdown - Authentication Phrase

Was installing APC PowerChute Network Shutdown (PCNS) on a customer’s server and couldn’t find a record of the Authentication Passphrase that I set ages back on their Smart UPSes Network Management 2 Card. So I went to reset it on the card and start anew… it took a lot of digging to find it on their particular release of firmware: Go into the UPS tab, then into “shutdown” inside the “Configuration” category: You may then need to change the passphrase being used on other servers. To do this, open up PCNS in your browser and click into the area shown below:

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