What is MSCONFIG?? Why does everyone go on about it all the time?Simply put, MSCONFIG is a central resource for doing minor changes (and some major ones!) to your Windows installation, to help you control what goes on (or doesn't go on) in Windows. In ME, you can prevent things starting up, or safely edit the system.ini and win.ini files, you can check the 'Environment Variables', and the regional settings. |
Tab 1 |
General (and the Advanced Settings buttons!) |
|
Normal Startup |
This is the default 'radio button' - if the black blob is in this button, then your settings are at the 'base level', which means that Windows itself, or the programs you installed, have set the settings, and you haven't (yet) tweaked them using MSCONFIG. |
| Diagnostic Startup | This button should ONLY be used as a very temporary option when troubleshooting severe problems - it severely reduces the functionality of the system, and makes it difficult to really assess the value of any external adjustments you may make. |
| Selective Startup | This is the setting that is most commonly used - you'll see 5 check-boxes in this setting. Each of those check-boxes has three states - ticked with white background (indicating 'default'), ticked with a gray background (indicating 'tweaked'), and un-ticked with a white background (indicating 'disabled') each of these boxes refers to one of the other tabs in the window (The odd tab being the International one - which has no box....more about that later). |
| The "Launch System Restore" Button | This is self-explanatory - it is (yet another) way to launch the System Restore utility, in case you manage to delete the shortcut from the Program menu, and lose MSINFO32 as well :) |
| The "Extract File..." Button | This button is used to extract files from Windows ME's central CAB store to the normal working area of the disk - see here for instructions http://support.microsoft.com/kb/129605/ ....and for files which are protected by SFP, there's also these instructions... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/265371/ |
| The "Advanced..." Button | This button has some dangerous stuff in it - As a general
rule, I would recommend leaving everything on this at its default (blank/disabled)
position, unless you have VERY good reason to do otherwise!!
The only exception to this rule is the "Enable Startup Menu" option - which can be very useful to use when troubleshooting, as it means that you don't have to remember in whether you're going into Normal Mode or Safe Mode until you have 30 seconds to make the choice :) When I have systems in VPC (Virtual PC - now a free download for Windows XP!), they are almost invariably set with this option active, as keyboards during boot are problematic in VPC for me/ |
Tab 2 |
System.ini |
| This lists each section of the System.ini file by its header - and the contents can be expanded, and edited. | |
| Generally, there are only three or four sections of the
file that you may want/need to edit. a) [boot] - you may need to edit the line 'shell=Explorer.exe' (which is what it *should* read) if it becomes corrupted by a virus, or if you need to run windows in another shell, such as Program Manager (shell=Progman.exe). b) [386Enh] - If you're running ME in a machine with more than 1GB of RAM, it may become unstable. In such cases, adding the line (or editing the existing line) in this section 'MaxPhysPage=40000' (without the quotes!) may resolve the instability problems (to be used in addition to the tweak below!). c) [vcache] - If you're running ME with more than 512MB of RAM, then it's possible for the caching mechanism to run out of space addressing all that lovely room, so we need to limit the size of the cache... with the entry 'MaxFileCache=512000' in this section. (The actual reason is that the counter for the amount of room only goes up to a certain number, and starts again from zero - do 512MB appears to the OS as 1MB, etc.) d) [Password Lists] - Every User on the machine has a password list. These lists are referenced here, and you can disable existing lists so that you can create new ones without having to destroy the profiles. Other sections should normally be left well alone! |
Tab 3 |
Win.ini |
| This lists each section of the Win.ini file by its header
- and the contents can be expanded, and edited. Generally, edits to win.ini should be avoided, there is a complex relationship between entries here and many other entries elsewhere! The only section which you may want to edit under normal circumstances would be the [windows] section - where you may want to remove entries from the 'load=' and 'run=' lines |
| Tab 4 | Static VxDs |
| VxD's are Virtual Device Drivers - ("OK - so WTF are they?" I hear you cry!) - roughly speaking, they are drivers for hardware that windows uses, but the hardware itself doesn't really exist! (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxD for details) It's better usually to ignore the technicalities, and just think of them as a special kind of driver. These can be dis-/en-abled using the checkboxes. Mostly best left alone, one prime candidate for unchecking is Norton rubbish that gets left behind after uninstalling NAV, etc |
Tab 5 |
Startup |
| Essential Items |
ScanRegistry - Registry (Machine Run) [checks that the registry is reasonably sane after loading - if not, then it loads a backup] LoadPowerProfile - Registry (Machine Run) LoadPowerProfile - Registry (Machine Service) [these two entries are different - and do different things.... one loads during the initial boot to set the default settings, and one after the user has logged on, sets the user preferences. BOTH are needed!] *Statemgr - Registry (Machine Service) [This entry activates SFP and System Restore] KB918547 - Registry (Machine Service) KB891711 - Registry (Machine Service) [Both of these entries are required to patch vulnerabilities in Windows' handling of certain files - they can be disabled for test purposes but should be re-enabled ASAP!) |
| Default but not essential | TaskMonitor -- Registry (Machine Run) |
| Default but should be disabled | PCHealth - Registry (Machine Run) - [NOTE that this also has to be disabled in Scheduled Tasks (Start | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Scheduled Tasks - disable the 'PCHealth Scheduler for Data collection' )] |
| Others | Anything else is fair game for disabling - but remember
that some of it WILL prevent 'normal operation' of whatever installed it.
Having said that, a lot of applications just put stuff in there to save a second or two on the load time when you actually fire the app up for the first time (e.g. Office!) - and if you don't use the app that often, then the slowdown on boot is more of an annoyance than a slowdown when you open the app. |
Tab 6 |
Environment |
| Entry | This is a bit of a strange heading - and is a hangover from
the days of DOS. Below are the standard entries - and what changes might mean |
| PATH | C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND - the PATH command sets the folders in which Windows searches to run any given command, and the order that the paths are in the PATH statement sets the order in which they are tried. In the default, the folder in which the command is issued is tried first, then the C:\WINDOWS folder, and then the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND folder is tried - if the executable still can't be found then Windows issues the infamous 'bad command' error. If you know that you're going to be issuing a lot of commands from another folder, then it may be worth adding that folder to the list at the end (so that it's not getting in the way of the normal usage - NEVER add C:\ to the list!) |
| PROMPT | $p$g - the well-known C:\> prompt in DOS! '$p' is the 'path' (C:\WINDOWS by default) in focus at the time, and the '$g' is '>' |
| TEMP | C:\WINDOWS\TEMP by default - the path to the Windows temporary
files.
Usually best left alone, unless you are multi-booting, in which case you could use a common drive for all your TEMP folders - to be done with care, as deleting the contents of the folder at the wrong time can have very strange effects! |
| TMP | C:\WINDOWS\TEMP by default - the path to the DOS temporary files - nowadays almost always the same as the Windows TEMP folder, it used to often be C:\TEMP - best to leave it as ME calls it unless you have some strange reason for it being elsewhere (especially since ME has NO REAL-MODE DOS!!!) |
Tab 7 |
International |
| This tab is a fun one - if you install Win ME in the default US mode, there's likely to be nothing in it. OTOH, if you install ME as a UK user (and do it properly), then the settings should be as follows. Once you have the settings right, you will probably never need to change (or even check) them again. | |
| English (British) settings | |
| MS-DOS Code Page | 850 |
| Country Code | 044 |
| Country Data File Name | country.sys |
| Display Data File Name | ega.cpi |
| Keyboard Data File Name | keyboard.sys |
| Keyboard Type | (empty) |
| Keyboard layout | (empty) |
| Language ID | uk |
REMEMBER - It is not possible to change the language in which ME runs without reformatting and reinstalling a proper language version. The best you can do is install an appropriate keyboard for your chosen language so that the output will be correct (hopefully!). Thus, if you've bought a Japanese laptop with a Japanese version of Windows ME on it, you will have to put up with using it in Japanese, but could install an English keyboard and English fonts, and have output in English - which would run properly if sent to English PC's - but you'd have to clean-install another English copy of Win ME to be able to see ME in English while doing it!. |
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Troubleshooting with MSCONFIG |
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While I was writing this page, I asked some fellow MVP's for comments and proofing (thanks , PABear, and Chris Quirke!) - their comments helped to make sure that what I've said is at least correct, if perhaps not in as much detail as you (or they<g>) might want. Chris also suggested a section on using MSCONFIG in troubleshooting....so here it is :) (thanks for the bulk of this, Chris - hope I got it right?) |
| Try all of these different approaches, going directly from startup (wait until all HD activity ceases) to shutdown without running anything or doing anything else: (NOTE: these should be done in this sequence, without resetting or adding back components unless told!). If the problem disappears after one of the sections, then you've isolated the problem section, and can investigate that one in more detail. Make sure that you DISCONNECT from any network before starting this, as you will be disabling firewalls and AV's in the process!!
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Once you've isolated (hopefully) the section that's causing you problems, just disable that section, and reboot again Does this still cure the problem? (even if it creates others!) Good - let's imagine then that it's the Startup list being nasty with you Look down the list - there's (say) 26 items in the list, so now enable the top 13 items (this is called Binary Search) and reboot - does this still solve the problem? If yes, then we know the problem entry is still in the bottom half of the list - so enable the next 6 items, and reboot - this bring s the problem back, so we now know that those 6 items contain the problem - re-disable the final three, and reboot again. Problem disappears, so we know that one of those three is the culprit - it's now a simple matter of elimination! If no - then re-disable the bottom 6 of the ones you disabled above, and reboot ..... repeat as required. |
I hope this all makes sense - if not then feel free to email me, and I'll see if I can explain it better.
Good Luck! |
Copyright © 2006,Noel Paton
This page was last updated 18/03/2009