Part one explains what Safe Mode is and how to access it, while part two introduces the bootlog.txt file and discusses how to use it to determine the load times of your computer's drivers and which ones have failed to load. Drivers are the unseen files that control the performance and features of many parts of your computer.

Have you ever seen your computer in its "Safe Mode?" Safe Mode is a special diagnostic tool available in Windows 95, 98, Me, and 2000, and is easily identified by the words Safe Mode appearing in each of the four corners of your monitor's screen. In addition, your desktop will most likely run and look different. It will appear to be slower and the icons may be larger (because the screen resolution will be 640 x 480 pixels) with fewer colors (only 16 colors instead of 256 or higher). Note: Being in Safe Mode does not protect your computer against viruses or hackers.

The reason for the different appearance is that when Windows boots up in Safe Mode, most of its startup files and hardware drivers will be skipped (not loaded). Only the most basic keyboard, mouse, and VGA (Video Graphics Adapter) drivers will be loaded. Your CD-ROM (if you are using Windows 95) and your parallel, serial, and USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports will be unavailable. If you are using a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you won't have any keyboard and mouse problems in Safe Mode; in contrast, if you are using a USB keyboard or mouse, you may find that they are not working. This might be a good reason to keep your old PS/2 (non-USB) keyboard and mouse whenever you upgrade to USB. Some of the newer USB keyboards and mice have a second cord connector (PS/2) and if both connectors are plugged into your computer, your keyboard or mouse will continue to function without its enhanced features whenever you are in Safe Mode or you have a USB problem.

By loading only the most basic drivers, the problem of isolating and resolving capabilities will be greatly enhanced. For example, suppose you installed a new driver for your video card, but when you rebooted, your monitor screen went black and remained so, even through you rebooted numerous times. Without a screen, there is no way you can find your way to the device manager to disable or uninstall the offending driver.

How can you correct this? Very simply: Manually go into Safe Mode and after Windows finishes loading, go to your System Properties window (press the Windows and the Pause/Break keys together), click on the Device Manager tab, double-click on Display Adapters, highlight your adapter, and uncheck the "Exists in all hardware profiles" box. Next click on OK and reboot.

Now your computer will boot up with a workable video driver and your desktop will reappear. Either keep this default setting or install the proper driver. An alternate method would be to click on the Remove box after you have highlighted your adapter, click on OK and on OK again, and reboot. Now Windows will "see" your adapter as a new hardware device and will install its default Windows' video driver.

How do you get into Safe Mode?
In Windows 95: Depress the F5 key at startup, right before the Windows graphics screen comes up. Some technicians suggest that you should start tapping the F5 key during startup to make sure that you get to the Microsoft Windows Startup (MWS) menu. On some computers, you may need to depress the F8 or Ctrl key instead of F5. Once the MWS menu appears, enter the number from the menu for Safe Mode, and press Enter.

In Windows 98 or Me: Depress or continue to tap the Ctrl key until the MWS menu appears. On some computers, you may need to press the F8 key. Type the number for Safe Mode and press Enter.

In Windows 95, 98, or Me: Another easy way to go into Safe Mode is to use your Windows startup diskette, sometimes called your emergency boot diskette. Insert your startup diskette into your A: drive and reboot.

Depending on the version of Windows you will see the A: prompt; type in "C:" (without the quotation marks) and depress the Enter key.

Next you'll see the C: drive prompt; change directories to your Windows directory by typing "CD \Windows" and press Enter. At the C:\Windows prompt, type "win /b" and depress Enter. Once the MWS menu appears, enter the number for Safe Mode, and press Enter. On the later versions of Windows—especially Windows Me, for example—you will need to type "win /d:m" instead of "win /b". Find the best solution for your computer by typing "win /?" at the C:\Windows prompt, pressing Enter, then selecting the appropriate switch (/b, /d:m, etc.) for your computer from the displayed choices. Also, in some versions of Windows, an intermediate menu may appear asking if you want to use your CD drive, etc.; in these cases, just select the Minimal Boot option.

In Windows 2000: During the normal startup, watch for the special Troubleshooting and Advanced Startup Options message to appear, then press the F8 key. Type the number for Safe Mode and press Enter.

In Windows NT: Refer to Document 294 in your User Manual, for instructions on "How to Boot Windows to VGA mode."

Safe Mode also has other advantages besides problem resolutions. I always run Windows' Disk Defragmenter in Safe Mode, as it completes faster than in Windows' normal mode. Norton Utilities' SpeedDisk (Norton's version of Disk Defragmenter) won't run in Safe Mode, while Microsoft's Disk Defragmenter will run in normal Windows, in Safe Mode, and in DOS mode.

Bootlog.txt and how to use it
This part of the article introduces the use of the Boot Log Analyzer, enabling you to read your bootlog.txt file in order to identify drivers that are either slowing down your startup time or that are failing to load.

Windows creates a special helpful file (bootlog.txt) upon request during normal startup; it will be placed in your root directory. This text file faithfully records the loading or failure to load of each driver.

You will want the most current version of your bootlog.txt file; thus, you will need to restart your computer as if you were going into the Safe Mode. From the MWS menu, enter the number for Logged (\Bootlog.txt), and press Enter. Now Windows, for this session only, will record the current driver loading activity into its bootlog.txt file and save its previous version as bootlog.prv.

After Windows is loaded, you will need to make the hidden (invisible) bootlog.txt file viewable. Click on My Computer from your Desktop, Tools from the Menu bar, Folder Options from the pull-down menu, the View tab, Options, Show All Files, and finally OK. Now you can view and print out your bootlog.txt file by using Notepad, Wordpad, or any similar word processing program. Another easy way to find a hidden file is to use Windows Explorer's Search function.

Bootlog.txt is a large file; for example, my bootlog.txt file is over 20 pages long. The file identifies each driver as it loaded and whether or not the load was successful. A typical entry will read: "[00092E23] Initing esdi_506.pdr" and the next line reads: "[00092E3B] Init Success esdi_506.pdr". With a bad entry, the second line would read: "[00092E3B] Init Failed esdi_506.pdr". The latter example would indicate that you had a driver that didn't load and that there was a problem. You would want to search your bootlog.txt file and identify all such failure statements.

With entries like this, how can you determine the amount of time it takes to load a driver? The problem is you can't. However, there is a freeware program called "Boot Log Analyzer" (version 1.22) that produces a more readable copy of your bootlog.txt file by adding column titles (Time, Duration, and Event) and by sorting the numerous entries by the loading time in ascending order. The loading time of each driver is displayed in milliseconds (thousandths of a second). What you want to look for is any driver that failed to load or took an abnormally long time. Generally speaking, each driver should load in less than seven seconds. Other features of the program are that you may display only the drivers that were slow, failed to load, or both; save the file, or search for specific entries. The Boot Log Analyzer is available from www.vision4.dial.pipex.com.

Should you discover any slow loading or non-loading drivers, you will want to resolve these problems to improve the performance of your computer. You may seek the advice of your favorite service technician, or use the Internet to search for solutions. Use your search engine of choice and type in the name of the driver that failed or was slow. From our previous example, you would type in "esdi_506.pdr" and read the numerous responses. Frequently, you will see a response and solution directly from the developer of the driver. In fact, in this example, the first document found was one from Microsoft's Product Support Services titled "ScanDisk Errors on IDE Hard Disks Larger Than 32 GB," and this document describes the problem and provides a remedy.

Note: All the instructions given in this article were tested on a Windows Me computer; earlier versions of Windows may respond slightly differently.

Jim Thornton is a member of the Channel Islands PC Users Group, from whose newsletter, The Outer Edge, this article is reprinted.