Professor Messer’s Free CompTIA A+ Certification Training Course – Diagnosing and Troubleshooting Operating Systems

Chapter 17: Diagnosing and Troubleshooting Operating Systems

The true test of a CompTIA A+ certified professional is when things begin to go bad. In this chapter, we’ll show you how to recover the Windows operating system, deal with errors, and run diagnostics programs and command line utilities.

When things go bad with an operating system, they can often go very, very bad. In this video, we’ll show you how you can recover from major operating system startup problems using Safe Mode, Last Known Good Configuration, Automated System Recovery Disks, and the Windows Recovery Console.

Windows is a great operating system, but it isn’t foolproof. If you’ve ever needed to troubleshoot the infamous blue screen of death, random operating system lockups, device problems, or application errors, this video should help you through some of these more common operational issues.

Errors with the boot sector or operating system boot files create massive problems for CompTIA A+ certified professionals. In this video, we’ll discuss boot sector errors (invalid partition tables, operating system not found), operating system boot file problems (NTLDR is missing), and application startup problems.

There are numerous utilities that can assist with the diagnosing of problems in the Windows operating system. In this video, we’ll work with the Task Manager, Device Manager, Event Viewer, MSCONFIG utility, Remote Desktop, System File Checker, Registry Editor, and demonstrate the features of the Computer Management console.

Some Windows diagnostic utilities aren’t used often, but they’re very useful when the right situation occurs. In this video, you’ll learn about Dr. Watson, the system restore utility, Windows security center, the task scheduler, and Windows Script Host.

The intricacies of the Windows command line may seem difficult to grasp, but with a little bit of practice and knowledge you’ll begin to take advantage of some powerful functionality. In this video, we’ll use the Windows command line to manage files and directories, edit files, perform diagnostics and tune the operating system.