Professional Windows Server 1002003 Security A Technical Reference [Electronic resources]

Roberta Bragg

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Advanced Options MenuTasks

You use the Advanced Options Menu to troubleshoot startup and shutdown problems.

Access the Advanced Options Menu

To access the Advanced Options Menu during the boot process, press F8 at the end of the BIOS startup just before the screen goes blank and Windows starts loading drivers. Once the menu appears, use the up and down arrow keys to select the option you want and then press Enter. Alternatively, you can press Esc to quit the menu without selecting any option and resume the normal boot process.

Troubleshoot Startup Problems

Here is a general procedure for troubleshooting startup problems that should help most of the time. By the way, you've backed up your system recently, haven't you?

You might start by checking the Event logs to see if an entry there identifies the source of the problem. If your boot problem arose after installing a new device, check the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) for WS2003 at www.microsoft.com/hcl to see if the device is supported.

Another useful tool to consult is System Information, which you can access by Accessories System Tools System Information. You can use this tool to check for resource conflicts such as devices trying to share the same IRQ. If you discover a resource conflict, you can then use Device Manager to reconfigure, disable, or remove the problem device.

If System Information and Device Manager show no resource conflicts or device driver problems, you could try selecting the Last Known Good Configuration option from the Advanced Options menu. This should get the system booting normally again. You can then repeat one configuration change at a time until you discover what caused the problem.

If you've made several changes before you rebooted and you think you know which change caused the problem but don't want to use Last Known Good Configuration to roll back all your changes, you could boot to Safe Mode, roll back the change you think is causing the problem, and see if the system boots normally. It may also help to examine the boot log file (

Ntbtlog.txt ) created when you boot to Safe Mode, as this log lists all devices and services that load and don't load during the Safe Mode startup process.

If you still can't get your system to boot properly, you may have to try using the Recovery Console, a command-line version of Windows that you can either start from your product CD or select at startup if you previously installed the Recovery Console on your machine. One of the most useful things to do with this tool is to run chkdsk on your system to see if your startup problem is a result of a hard-drive failure. If this is the case, replace your hard drive and restore from backup. See

Recovery Console later in this chapter for more information on how to use this advanced troubleshooting tool.

If you are unable to repair your system using the Recovery Console, you'll probably have to restore your system from backup. If you're lucky enough to have had the foresight to create an ASR disk set, you can use the new Automated System Recovery feature of WS2003 to restore your system to its pristine state and then restore your data volumes from backup media. For more information on Automated System Recovery, see

Backup later in this chapter.

Another option you may consider is repairing your installation of Windows by running Setup in Repair Mode from the product CD, especially if you haven't previously created an ASR disk set. After performing the repair you'll still have to reinstall your applications and restore your data from backup. To repair your installation of Windows, follow these steps:

Insert product CD Boot machine when prompted to boot from CD, do so Enter Enter F8 R

You are prompted for your product key, and then Setup runs without any further prompts while it reinstalls your operating system using its currently configured settings such as computer name and network settings. If something funny happens during the repair, check the

Setuperr.log file in the

\Windows folder.

Note that I never mentioned using the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD). In NT and W2K, you could create an ERD together with a backup of registry hives in the

\Winnt\Repair folder. In WS2003, the ERD has been eliminated, perhaps because floppy disks are hardly needed anymore for systems with bootable CD-ROM drives. Instead, you can use the

Backup utility to back up system state information, which includes the registry hives. Alternatively, you can use the

regback.exe utility in the Resource Kit to back up your registry manually.

Boot Disks

You can also create a boot disk for your server so you can boot from a floppy if your system can't start normally from its hard drive. This is done as follows:

Format a floppy disk on a WS2003 machine.
Copy the files
Ntldr and
Ntdetect.com from your WS2003 machine to the root directory of the floppy.

Use Notepad to create a file on the root directory of your floppy consisting of the following lines and save it with the name

Boot.ini :

[boot
loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows
[operating systems]
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows="WS2003,
Enterprise"

The last line may vary if you have SCSI instead of IDE for the drive on which your boot and system partitions reside or if you have Standard Edition instead. For more information on creating and editing

Boot.ini files, search the Knowledge Base at

support.microsoft.com .

Troubleshoot Shutdown Problems

If your server hangs or displays an error message when you try to shut it down, you can use some of the procedures discussed earlier for troubleshooting the problem. First, try using Task Manager to see if any running applications are preventing your server from shutting down properly:

Ctrl-Alt-Del Task Manager Application tab right-click on application End Task try shutting down again repeat if necessary with each application until the culprit is found

If your shutdown problem arose after you installed a new device, updated a device driver, or made some other system configuration change, you could either use Last Known Good Configuration or manually reverse your configuration steps if you can remember them. If this doesn't resolve the problem, you can see if your machine shuts down properly in Safe Mode, examine the boot log file, check the CMOS settings of your BIOS, run diagnostics on your machine, install a second machine with an identical configuration and applications to see if the problem is reproducible, reinstall drivers for all your devices, replace hardware components, call Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS), or swing your mouse overhead and yell for help.