Is Windows misbehaving? One diagnostic technique you can try is Safe Mode to see if you can narrow down the cause of the trouble.
Is your Windows machine freezing, crashing, or just not up to snuff? It could be a bad application, a quirky driver, or even a faulty piece of hardware.
One way to get to the bottom of the problem in a Windows machine is to start the operating system in Safe Mode, which launches Windows in a clean, pristine, barebones fashion by preventing certain drivers and other items from loading. If Windows works happily in Safe Mode, it typically means the fault lies within a certain driver, service, or other plugin that would otherwise load automatically.
The steps offered here assume that you can at least boot into Windows and access the Safe Mode feature.
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In the search field at the bottom of your screen, type the command msconfig. At the top of the search results, click System Configuration or just press Enter.
Alternatively, click the Start button, scroll down the apps list and open the folder for Windows Administrative Tools. Click the shortcut for System Configuration.
In the System Configuration window that appears, your current setting is most likely Normal Startup or Selective Startup. Click the second option for Diagnostic startup, which loads only basic drivers and services.
Note that the drivers and services for audio, networking, and certain other functions won’t load with this option, so you won’t be able to use or test those features. Click OK. At the System Configuration message, click the Restart button to immediately reboot your computer. Safe Boot
After your PC restarts, sign back into Windows and try to reproduce the problem you were experiencing. Whether or not the trouble persists, you’ll still need to perform further testing to narrow it down. Open the System Configuration tool again. Click the Boot tab. Select the checkbox for Safe boot.
Under Safe Boot are four different options: Minimal, Alternate shell, Active Directory Repair, and Network.
