How to steer around common Windows troubles?

We’re pretty sure that Bill Gates developed and designed the Windows PC to make our lives easier, but what he probably didn’t count on was that his operating system would be the problem more than half of the time! Nevertheless, Windows is something that most of us simply can’t do without. Dependency on the windows platform and computers in general means that somewhere, at some point, something is bound to go wrong. Remember how many times you’ve had to reload Windows, format your disk drives, go for hard drive recovery, and upgrade system hardware like RAM? Maybe some smart troubleshooting tips will help you. So, before you decide to call up IT support or think you need some professional hard drive recovery service, let’s walk through some of the most common problems and how you can troubleshoot them yourself.

1. PC Won’t Boot Into Windows

Probably the most common problem faced by anyone who has used a windows PC, failure of the operating system to boot up can be very frustrating. So, here’s what you can do:
If your PC won’t boot into Windows at all, you should first try booting it in Safe Mode. If that manages to boot up the OS, you’re probably facing an issue that would load only when you boot normally. This could be an issue with the graphics card drivers, junk applications, or even spy or malware applications.
If you can’t manage to even boot up Windows in Safe Mode, you can still try using the Start-up Repair tools, which can be accessed from the “advanced” options in Safe Mode menu.

2. PC Crashing or Blue Screening

If booting up is the most common problem faced by Windows users, PC crashes are probably the second. When your PC crashes with the blue screen of death during random intervals, you should probably make sure that you the automatic reboot feature has been disabled. If you can access Windows after that, you can try using the useful BlueScreenView tool, which will give you some additional information regarding the error you’re facing. At this point however, it’s best to do a google search of the error, especially if you’re not in to the basics of computing.

And if you’re using Windows 7 or later versions and you get a blue screen of death, there are high chances that the problem is either driver or hardware related. Because contrary to general perception, Windows won’t just crash unless there’s a conflict, problem or compatibility issue that is hardware related.

3. PC Is Lagging

Follow this 4 step procedure in case your Windows PC is running slower than usual:

Check Task Manager
The first thing that anyone should do when a computer is running slowly is open Task Manager, or Process Explorer. This allows users to see what process is taking up the most resources of the CPU or memory. And while you’re there, make sure to look for and terminate other resource-wasting apps.

Uninstall Malware
Once you’ve killed the resource-hogging application that was killing your CPU, it’s time to start getting rid of all those applications that you have, but never used. Applications like Revo Uninstaller and PC Decrapifier are great tools that will easily clean up applications without leaving any traces.

PC Clean Up
Now here’s the easy part, cleaning up your PC is really can be done quite simply, by running the in-built Disk Cleanup feature. But, if you really want to do a thorough job, get a copy of the CCcleaner software and run through the various cleaning sessions. You can even set up CCleaner to run on a set schedule, to keep your PC clean on a regular basis.

Virus Scan
Once all the other steps have been performed, finish off by performing a full system scan, especially if your PC is still running slower than normal and after you’ve determined that it’s not a runaway application. The free to download, Microsoft Security Essentials app is a great tool for the job.

4. Windows Explorer Is Hanging

If you have trouble loading up Windows Explorer, which we’re sure you do, you should know that the problem is almost always a incompatible shell extension that shouldn’t have been installed in the first place, or it could be a shell extension that is conflicting with another extension. In such cases, it’s best to uninstall both or all the conflicting extensions and only reinstall the ones that you simply cannot do without.