Fortunately though there is an alternative and it’s in every version of the operating system (XP, Vista and Windows 7).  This is called “Safe Boot” and you can find it in the MSConfig panel.  To open this type msconfig into the Start Menu search box in Vista or Windows 7, or run msconfig from the run option in XP.

Under the Boot tab in the MSConfig window you’ll see the Safe Boot option as a tick box.  Turning this on will make Windows use the Safe Boot option every time thereafter.  When you want to stop using Safe Boot and return to starting Windows normally you’ll need to return to the MSConfig panel and untick this option.  There are also several other options here including Minimal Boot, which will take you into the full Safe Mode, but the standard option will normally be enough for most people.

The Safe Boot screen, as you can see here is a half-way house between the full Windows desktop and Safe Mode.  What you will find though is that most of your hardware drivers will be installed and working though your startup software will still be disabled.

So when might you want to use Safe Boot?  Occasionally you will encounter a problem in Windows that you will need to go into Safe Mode to repair.  As I mentioned earlier however Safe Mode won’t allow you to perform some Windows tasks, and this is where the Safe Boot mode is useful.  You may also suspect that your problems aren’t being caused by a hardware driver, but by software instead.  This diagnostic mode enables you to have a full Windows desktop where nothing loads at startup and where you can run and check programs individually to see what effect they are having on your system.

As I have already mentioned Safe Mode is extremely limiting, not just in the very low screen resolution that it gives you.  If you need to run full diagnostics on your copy of Windows, to see what’s going on under the hood, or if you need to test individual software packages in a safe environment where they will be able to run properly then Windows Safe Boot is the way to do it.

Remember though that you will need to turn off Safe Boot when you are done, or else Windows will start permanently in this mode.  I have found this to be a very useful diagnostic tool in Windows and it’s extremely underused because, frankly, many people simply do not know that it exists.  Hopefully you will find it useful too.

MSConfig can be accessed from the run command [Windows R] by typing in [msconfig]. It happens in rare cases that Windows cannot start the application displaying the message that “Windows cannot find MSConfig” which can be the cause of a virus infection or corrupt entries in the Windows Registry or file system.

There are basically two possibilities why Windows is displaying the error message. The first is that the file is no longer in the default directory on the hard drive; The second that the file path in the Registry is linking to a wrong location or not existing at all.

Finding MSConfig.exe

The first task is to locate msconfig.exe on the computer system. The default directory where Microsoft is placing the file is
WINDOWS\pchealth\helpctr\binaries on Windows XP systems and Windows\system32\ on Windows Vista systems.

If the file turns out to be in that directory skip ahead to step 2 which will check the correct file path in the Windows Registry. If the file is not there at all you need to add it back there. The easiest way to do that is by extracting it again from the Windows installation CD or DVD.

To extract it from the Windows CD you need to run a command from the command line. Press [Windows R], enter [cmd] and hit [enter].

Type in the following command if you are running Windows XP: (assuming E is the letter of the drive containing the Windows CD and C:\WINDOWS\ the location of the Windows installation.

EXPAND -R E:\I386\MSCONFIG.EX_ C:\WINDOWS\PCHEALTH\HELPCTR\BINARIES

Windows Vista users run the following command instead: (again assuming E is the DVD drive and C:\Windows the Windows installation directory)

EXPAND -R E:\I386\MSCONFIG.EX_ C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32

Correcting the msconfig path

Windows stores path information about selected applications in the Windows Registry. Start the Windows Registry by typing [Windows R], [regedit], [enter]. Then navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths

Check if an entry named msconfig.exe exists. If it does check the default value which should be the path information pointing right to the location of msconfig.exe in the Windows directory. You can double-click the default entry to change the path if it is the wrong one.

If the msconfig.exe key does not exist in the Windows Registry do the following:

• Right-click the App Paths key and select New > Key from the menu that is appearing.
• Name the new key MSCONFIG.EXE.
• Double-click the default value in the right window and add the full path to msconfig.exe as the value.

The changes are immediately which means it is possible to try to run msconfig again to see if the changes have fixed the problem.

It would be possible to delete the entry in the Registry because the Registry key where it is located is displayed in Msconfig. If you do not want to fiddle around with your Registry you could use the Msconfig Cleanup Utility [via Genbeta] which displays all inactive startup entries in Msconfig.

Just check some or all of the entries that you want to permanently remove from the Msconfig dialog.

We all know that we can prevent autostarts by using the msconfig utility which ships with every Microsoft operating system. The problem that arises here is that although the programs are not autostarted anymore they still exist in the list which looks rather messy because it is growing over time. It does not make much sense to keep them in the list if you disabled them from the list.

All of the useless items can be easily removed by using two methods:

Registry (Regedit)
Software MSConfig Cleanup

Using the Registry:

As usual, please backup your registry first.

Go to Start –> Run –> Regedit
Open Regedit and go to HKEY_Local_Machine/Software/Microsoft/Sharedtools/MSconfig
Notice that there’s a ‘StartupFolder’ and ‘StartupReg’
Delete unused entries from those folders by comparing used and unused items through MSConfig.

Using MSConfig CleanUp:

The process of cleaning up old and unused startup items in msconfig is much easier with the free software MSConfig Cleanup. The software will automatically display all programs found and you can check all the programs in the list that you want to remove.

First of all, you need a tool to check them out. You could use the run command and enter msconfig which should display the autostart items or you could use a third party tool like Autoruns from Sysinternals which i recommend for this task.

I will show you how to identify the programs that are running using either msconfig or Autoruns. For the sake of simplicity start msconfig using the windows run command and click on the startup item on the menu.

You see a list of programs that are loaded when windows is starting. You probably can identify some without looking them up, if that is the case and you don´t want them running on your system startup disable them.

Now, let us say you found an entry and don´t know why this is loaded by startup. Head to the CastleCops website and enter the filename that is loaded in the search field. If the file is found you see a description and a recommendation (status). In short, if the status shows Y=YES, you should keep it, if it shows N=NO you can disable it. There is also U=USER for users choice, X for definitely not required (often virii, malicious, spyware) and ? for unknown.

Read More:

autoruns
CastleCops