The Problem
You know the drill: You install new software on your computer, follow the instructions carefully, reboot your machine as instructed...and suddenly all havoc breaks loose! Windows won't come up and there are blue screen errors. You fear your computer is totally fried.
The Solution
Thank goodness for the F8 key. Survey your keyboard, locate F8 and make a mental note about pushing that key the next time things don’t go well after installing that seemingly benign piece of software.
Here's how it works: When your computer boots, it's actually doing a bunch of different things. (Yes, I know, if only that sequence weren't so darn time consuming. One day computers will 'turn on' as quickly as light bulbs...)
The F8 key, if pushed once while your computer is booting, promptly interrupts the boot process and offers a host of options for how you want your PC to proceed. For example, to remove viruses and spyware, we geeks sometimes need to boot a sick machine in Safe Mode, which is a bare-bones version of Windows, so that we can gain more control over what's actually running on the computer.
Hit F8 while your PC is booting, you are presented other options as well. One lets you reboot the machine using the last known good configuration, i.e. the configuration before that awful software was installed. Simply hit F8 during the boot cycle, choose to reboot using the last known good configuration, let the computer get back into Windows, and then remove the offending program via the Add or Remove Programs, located in the Control Panel.
James Kerr is President/CEO of SuperGeeks, a Hawaii-based computer service and repair company (www.supergeeks.net). Send questions, comments and suggestions to help@supergeeks.net or call 942-0773.
