Win 98's Handy System Repair Tools

You might eventually run into a problem you would like to solve on your own, if possible, rather than pay for a technical support call. Furthermore, even if you decide to request technical support, the person helping you might need to get some rather detailed information about your particular computer configuration to best determine what is causing your problem. Here is where Windows 98 support tools come into play.

In this page we will discuss the following topics: The updated Dr. Watson tool Windows update The System Information tool and related tools such as the System Monitor, the System File Checker, the System Resource Meter, and the Automatic Skip Driver Agent The ActiveX Control Viewer The new HTML-based Windows Help You can use the support tools supplied with Windows 98 to track down problems or to simply find out more information about your system. By using the tools discussed in this page, along with the other tools (such as those used for disk maintenance) previously discussed in this book, you can also keep your computer in top shape and help avoid any potential problems down the road.

Where to Find the System Tools 
Many of the tools discussed in this page are in the System Tools program group, which you can access by navigating from the Start button. To make sure that all the support tools are installed on your computer, choose Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel and click on the Windows Setup tab. Click on the System Tools category and click on the Details button. Make sure all tools listed there have a check mark beside them; then click OK to close the Control Panel and install any tools not already present on your system (you will be prompted to insert the Windows 98 CD-ROM if you wish to install any additional tools).

Some of the system tools discussed in this page must either be loaded from the Run menu (found off the Start button) or launched from within the System Information tool discussed later in this page. Each of the following sections that describe the various system tools also include information as to where you can find the tools.

The System Tools program group contains many of the system components discussed in this page, along with various network and disk tools.

Using Dr. Watson 
With Windows 98, Microsoft is breathing new life into one of the older and more familiar support tools. Dr. Watson is a memory-resident tool that monitors your system and jumps into action whenever an application performs an illegal operation or crashes. The Dr. Watson utility derives its name from the notion of having someone constantly monitoring the health of your computer system and advising you about any problems it might be experiencing. Although Dr. Watson was included with previous versions of Windows, its use and capabilities were fairly limited.

Assuming that it worked properly in its previous incarnations, Dr. Watson would bring up a dialog box any time an application crashed and would inform you that it was creating a log of the information associated with that crash. The information in the log, of which few users could make heads or tails, could then be conveyed to a technical support person to assist in determining why the program failed.

In Windows 98, Dr. Watson has evolved into a full-fledged system information and support tool. Unlike its previous versions, Dr. Watson can now give you a wealth of information about applications and device drivers running on your system, making it easier to diagnose problems yourself as well as to provide detailed information to support personnel.

Loading Dr. Watson 
As in previous versions of Windows, Dr. Watson does not automatically load when you boot your computer. You also won't find it listed anywhere on your Start button menu or in the Support Tools program group. You must load Dr. Watson from the command line or from the System Information tool, or you can set it up to automatically load each time you start Windows 98. To start Dr. Watson, either open an MS-DOS prompt window or choose Run from the Start button menu. Type drwatson and press Enter. This will execute the DRWATSON.EXE application found in your Windows 98 root folder, which by default is usually C:\WINDOWS. When you load Dr. Watson for the first time, it should scan your system for configuration information.

Note that although you can keep Dr. Watson running all the time on your computer, in most cases it doesn't make sense to do so because the monitoring Dr. Watson performs will slow down your system to some degree. Although this system degradation might not be noticeable on a fast computer, in most cases Dr. Watson is usually best reserved for use when troubleshooting. Thus, if you notice that an application is crashing on a regular basis, you might load Dr. Watson so that it can intercept the problem the next time the application causes a fault.

Taking a Snapshot 
When you run Dr. Watson, it will analyze all the software and device drivers running on your system and create a snapshot of everything running on your system. After it has finished this process, which might take as much as a minute or two depending on the speed of your computer, it will open a window advising you of whether it found any noticeable problems with your system.

In this default window you can enter any relevant information into the large text box located in the bottom half of the window. Any information you place here will be kept along with the rest of the snapshot information that was generated. If you later experience system or application faults that cause Dr. Watson to create a snapshot, you should enter information into this text box that indicates what you were doing at the time this fault occurred--such as trying to print a document or access a Web site. You can send this information, along with the rest of the snapshot, to a technical support person to assist in determining the cause of the error.

This is the default window that Dr. Watson shows when it creates a system snapshot.

After the snapshot is created and you have entered any information you want into the text box on the default window, choose Save from the File pull-down menu. A standard Windows Save dialog box will then appear, asking where you want to save the file. Select a name for your Dr. Watson log file and save it in the directory of your choice. Dr. Watson will then make a log entry of all this information in a file in the directory you selected.

This log file will have a .WLG extension. You can view it directly within Dr. Watson. Thus, if you double-click on a log file, or if you select the file by choosing Open from the File pull-down menu in Dr. Watson and navigate to the location of that log file, Dr. Watson will load the file and display it just as it appeared when the program made the snapshot.

Setting Options in Dr. Watson 
Although the default settings in Dr. Watson will suffice for many users, you might want to configure the program to keep a detailed history of logs and to display the log file with more information than that shown in the default window. To enable these and other capabilities, choose View | Options. The Options window appears.

The main items you might want to change here are the Log Files and View settings. The Log Files setting allows you to determine how many snapshots will be maintained in the Dr. Watson log. You might want to decrease this number if you want to save disk space, or alternatively you might increase this amount if you want to track a long history of system configuration snapshots.

You can customize Dr. Watson according to your needs through the Options window.

However, the item you most likely will want to change in this Options window is the View settings. The Standard view is enabled by default. When using the Standard view, only the main Dr. Watson screen will be displayed whenever a system snapshot is generated. By selecting the Advanced view option, you can see the large amount of system information Dr. Watson logs and tracks.

Viewing Detailed Information 
Although the default window displayed by Dr. Watson will supply you with some basic information about any problem you might experience, you must choose the Advanced view option to see all of the wealth of information generated by the snapshot. You can view your snapshot in Advanced view either by choosing that option from the Options window or by choosing View | Advanced View. In either event, the default window will change to a multitabbed window from which you can choose among items of information gathered by the snapshot. Note that the tabs that appear in Advanced view will differ somewhat from computer to computer based on the configuration of each system. Therefore, the tabs shown and discussed in this section might be different than those on your computer.

The System Tab 
The first tabbed window in Dr. Watson after the Diagnosis tab (which is the main default window shown in Standard view) is the System tab. This tab displays information about the version of Windows 98 you are using and other related data. Windows 98 is actually version 4.1 of Microsoft Windows, and any additional numbers refer to the build number, or interim version, of Windows 98. Thus, the display of "Microsoft Windows 98 4.10.1691" means you are using build 1691 of Windows 98. This information can help technical support personnel determine the exact version of Windows 98 that you are using so that they can help narrow their attempts to find or duplicate your specific problem. This is necessary because the Windows 98 system will behave differently based on which version you are using.

The Advanced view option allows you to see all the information Dr. Watson logs when it creates a snapshot of your system.

This System tab shows the type of installation that was performed, such as an upgrade from a previous version of Windows. It also displays your username, which might be relevant if you have configured Windows 98 to be used by more than one person.

The System tab further displays information about your hardware, such as the type of processor and the amount of random access memory (RAM) on your computer. Finally, this tab shows what level of system resources were available when the snapshot was made.

The Tasks Tab If you have ever wanted to review all the software components running on your computer at any given time, you are going to love the Tasks tab. Within this window is displayed virtually everything you would want to know about each and every application and system process running on your computer.

The Tasks tab shows every application running on your system, including some system programs you probably didn't even realize were loaded.

Moving from left to right in this tab's window, the first thing displayed is the actual filename of the program that is running. Following that is the version number of the application and the name of the company that developed the software. A user-friendly description for the application is also provided. Both the file version and description information are pulled from data placed in the application's executable file by the software development company. This window also provides you with the exact path for this file so that you can navigate to it if necessary. Finally, this window displays the main program with which the application is associated.

The Startup Tab
When your computer boots up, Windows 98 automatically loads a number of applications. Many of these applications are located in the Startup programs group located off the Start menu, but others are loaded based on settings in the system Registry file. The Startup tab, identifies all programs loaded by default each time Windows 98 boots.

This tab lists the name of the application or system file that is loaded and then identifies whether the program is launched from the Startup group or from settings in the Registry. Finally it tells you the command executed to launch that application.

By selecting the Startup tab, you can see which programs are normally loaded each time you start Window

TIP: You can prevent applications in your Startup group from loading when you boot into Windows 98 by holding down the Control (CTRL) key on your keyboard while Windows 98 is booting. However, this does not prevent applications whose launch settings are maintained in the Registry from loading. If you wish to remove or add programs from the Startup group, you can do so by using the System Configuration Utility as discussed later in this page.

The Kernel Drivers Tab
By clicking on the Kernel Drivers tab, you can view the virtual device drivers and related system files loaded on your computer. These files are used in connection with various application and system processes and also provide the means by which various hardware components interact with the operating system.

Moving from left to right, this window shows the name of the driver followed by its version number and manufacturer. It then displays a description of the driver to help you determine with which application, process, or hardware device the driver is associated. It also tells you how the driver is loaded--for instance, from a Registry setting--and whether the driver is static or dynamic. You will notice that most of the Plug and Play drivers are dynamic because these are loaded and unloaded depending on whether their related process or hardware device is currently running on your computer. Finally, this window shows whether the driver is provided as part of the operating system files or is supplied by an independent hardware or software vendor.

The Kernel Drivers tab displays the wide variety of drivers running on your system that enable applications and hardware to function properly.

The User Drivers and MS-DOS Drivers Tabs When you select the User Drivers tab you will see a number of multimedia drivers loaded on your system, such as drivers for the DirectX Windows 98 components. This window displays the filename for the driver, the version number and manufacturer, a description of the driver's purpose, the exact path for the driver's location, and the system component (operating system or otherwise) the driver is part of.

Following the User Drivers tab is the one for MS-DOS drivers. When you select this tab a list of any device drivers that run in MS-DOS environments will be displayed. These drivers are used for MS-DOS programs that run within Windows 98. Any drivers for hardware devices that require real-mode MS-DOS drivers can also be listed here.

For information on multimedia drivers, look in the User Drivers tab.

A list of all MS-DOS device drivers is displayed on the MS-DOS Drivers tab.

The 16-bit Modules Tab Although Windows 98 is a 32-bit operating system, it retains and supports 16-bit modules to attain a high degree of backward compatibility with software and hardware designed, either in whole or in part, for use on 16-bit operating systems such as Windows 3.1. Therefore, there will always be quite a number of 16-bit modules on your computer. The 16-bit Modules tab displays the modules running on your system.

Like the previous tabs, this window displays a variety of information about each module running on your system at the time the snapshot was taken. You can use this information to identify each module and determine its physical location within your system.

The 16-bit Modules tab identifies components on your system that employ 16-bit system processes.

Creating Secondary System Snapshots 
When Dr. Watson is loaded in memory, you can create a system snapshot at any time by double-clicking on its icon in the system tray. If you have Dr. Watson loaded in memory on your system, it will also automatically appear and create a snapshot whenever an application performs an invalid operation or crashes. Be sure to save this log file for future reference by choosing File | Save in Dr. Watson.

After you have run Dr. Watson for the first time during any Windows session, it will remain resident in memory until you unload it. If you wish to stop running Dr. Watson, simply right-click its icon in the system tray and select Exit Dr. Watson.

Using Windows Update 
One of the new features in Windows 98 is Windows Update. This tool is a one-stop shop for getting the latest Windows 98 drivers and system components and for searching the Microsoft KnowledgeBase for references to a problem you might be experiencing.

Windows Update provides an easy way to connect to Microsoft resources on the Internet.

Windows Update is a gateway for obtaining two main types of help from Microsoft over the Internet: the Update Wizard and Technical Support. By using these resources you can solve many problems yourself and can also keep your system up-to-date.

To access Windows Update, simply click on the Start button and select Windows Update from the Start button menu. This will open a Web page in Internet Explorer, so you should be connected to the Internet before starting Windows Update. When Internet Explorer opens, the Windows Update page on Microsoft's Web site will automatically load.

When you load the Windows Update page for the first time, your Web browser will likely download one or more ActiveX controls used to check your computer for available updates. During this process you will be presented with a pop-up window asking you whether you want to install each control. Click on the Yes button to install the control so that the Update Wizard will function properly.

TIP: Like all ActiveX controls that you download from the Internet or an intranet, the control used by the Update Wizard can be removed manually later if you wish. If you want to remove this control, open the Downloaded Program Files folder within your Windows 98 directory and remove the Conveyor Control. For more information on removing ActiveX controls from your system, see the "Using the ActiveX Control Viewer" section later in this page.

Although the rest of this section focuses on the Update Wizard, you can also access Microsoft Technical Support over the Internet by choosing that link from the main Windows Update page.

The Update Wizard 
The Update Wizard contains newer versions of Windows 98 components and drivers from Microsoft. Note that although the Update Wizard will notify you of any new components available from Microsoft, you might still need to check with hardware and software manufacturers from whom you purchased your computer and any accessories to obtain any updated drivers or software for their products.

When you open the Update Wizard page within Windows Update you are presented with two links: Update and Restore. Clicking on Update will download a list of available updates and will then scan your computer to see whether it can use any of them. For instance, if there is an updated driver available for a DVD drive but you don't have that drive, you won't be notified of its availability. Windows 98 will determine whether any of the available updates are of use to you, making it a lot easier than having to manually look through a list of all available updates and trying to determine which files are necessary for your particular system.

Conversely, choosing Restore will uninstall any components you choose that you have previously installed through the Update Wizard. Both the Update and Restore functions are fairly straightforward and require little effort on your part.

Update If you click on the Update link on the Windows Update page, another browser window will appear and a separate Update page will be loaded into that browser. When that window loads, it will automatically download a file containing all available updates and will begin scanning your computer to see whether any of the available updates apply to your computer.

The Update Wizard will scan your computer to determine whether any of your files need to be updated.

After that process has completed, which might take several minutes, a list of all available updates for your computer will appear in the left window of this page. If you click on any of the available updates in the left window, the Update Wizard will download a brief description of the update and display that information in the right window.

If, after reviewing the description of the file, you decide you want to download and install the update, click the Install link found in the upper-right portion of this page.

You can select any of the available updates to get additional information to help you determine whether to install the update.

NOTE: When you elect to install an update, the previous version of the related file stays on your computer. Thus, if you later decide to remove the upgraded component, you can have the Update Wizard reinstall the previous version.

When you click Install, the ActiveX control used to download and install the component you selected will present a separate window informing you that you have chosen to install the component. The main purpose of this window is to allow you to confirm that in fact you want to install the component. The name of the component you selected for installation should also appear in this window. Click the OK button to proceed or click Cancel to return to the Update Wizard page without installing the upgrade component.

Windows Update uses an ActiveX control to download and install any components you elect to update.

After you click on the OK button, a progress bar will appear on the Update Wizard page that will inform you of the status of downloading the selected component. After the upgrade has been successfully downloaded and installed, a dialog box will appear notifying you that the installation is complete. Although the Update Wizard should have identified all available updates the first time it scanned your computer when loading the update page, you can check again to make sure that there are no other available updates. To do so, click on the Rescan link. The Update Wizard will then perform another full scan of your system to make sure you have all of the available updates.

Restore After installing an update, you might decide later that you want to uninstall it. The most common reason for doing this would be if an updated driver or component you installed is not working properly on your computer. In such an event, choose the Restore link from within the Update Wizard page.

Windows 98 makes it easy to uninstall any component you have updated through the Update Wizard.

When you select Restore, the wizard will then display a list of all installed upgrades in the left window of the page. After you select the component by clicking on it, choose the Uninstall link to remove this updated component from your system. The previous version of this file will then automatically be restored to your computer in place of the newer version.

Using the System Information Utility 
The System Information utility, which is available from the System Tools program group, provides real-time information about your system on a wide variety of hardware and software settings. If you want a detailed list of which files and system processes are running on your system, or if you want detailed information about hardware settings and potential conflicts, System Information can often provide enough information to help you diagnose a problem. If you find that you need technical support for Windows 98 or other applications, the support engineer with whom you speak might very well ask you to run System Information to get some specific information about your system. Although System Information was included with previous versions of Windows, it has been enhanced to provide even greater detail in Windows 98.

One of the best features of System Information is that it is a central application from which you can launch many of the system tools found in Windows 98, including several that do not appear in the System Tools program group. These other applications are available from the Tools pull-down menu and include such relatively obscure tools as the Signature Verification Tool, the Automatic Skip Driver Agent, and the Version Conflict Manager, all of which are discussed later in this page.

Using the Version Conflict Manager 
You can run the Version Conflict Manager by selecting it from the Tools pull-down menu in the System Information utility. This tool, tracks certain files that were updated when you installed Windows 98 and provides a means by which you can restore the old version to your computer.

You can use the Version Conflict Manager to return to a previous version of a file.

To restore a file that was backed up by Windows 98, simply select it from the list of available files and click on the Restore Selected Files button. As with many other Windows applications, you can select multiple files by holding down the Control (CTRL) key on your keyboard as you select each file. After you have restored files, you might need to reboot your computer before the changes take effect.

Using the Signature Verification Tool 
This tool can check any file on your computer to determine whether it has been signed by the company that developed the file. Windows 98 allows the operating system to automatically check a driver, application, or other file for a signature before installing it on your system. Code signing is an important element of the Windows Update tool, which can be set to prevent the installation of unsigned code. All Microsoft drivers and software components distributed via the Windows Update Web site are signed by Microsoft. To run this tool, select it from the Tools pull-down menu in the System Information utility.

Using the System Monitor 
The System Monitor is a tool that can be used to track any number of different operations on your computer, from processor usage to the data transfer rate on your network or dial-up connection. Like all system monitoring tools, in most cases you would not want to run it all the time because it will cause some level of system degradation, although on a fast computer it probably would not be noticeable. Usually you will only want to use the System Monitor for a certain period of time, such as a few hours or days, to analyze your system performance and troubleshoot any problems or bottlenecks.

To run the System Monitor, select it from the System Tools program group. You can use it to keep track of a wide range of system elements. Although System Monitor will usually add one element (processor usage) by default, you can add any system elements you want it to monitor by either clicking on the Add button on the toolbar or by choosing Edit | Add Item. A two-pane window will appear containing all of the processes you can monitor.

You can use the System Monitor to track the perform- ance of any number of different system functions.

You can select from a wide range of system processes to monitor.

When you click on a category in the left window pane, all of the associated elements that can be monitored for that category are displayed in the right pane. After you have selected one of these items and clicked the OK button, the main System Monitor window will be refreshed. In addition to displaying any other elements previously being monitored, it will now also contain the new item you selected. Note that the categories and items available for monitoring will vary from computer to computer based on their configurations. Therefore, the choices available on your computer may be different.

After you have selected the system processes you want to monitor, you might want to change the way that the System Monitor displays the results of its monitoring. Although the default is to use line charts, you can elect to have the results shown as bar charts or numeric charts. To select these chart displays, you can either click on the toolbar buttons for these options or select them by choosing these chart types from the View pull-down menu.

One of the other options available from the toolbar and pull-down menus is to edit the display and other elements of each system process being monitored. To do this, either click on the Edit button located on the toolbar or choose Edit | Edit Item. This brings up another window from which you can select the item you want to edit; then click OK. You will be able to change the color and other elements used in the graph for that process.

If you like, you can have the System Monitor keep a log of the processes it is monitoring in a file to which you can refer later. To enable logging, choose File | Start Logging. You are prompted to name the file and determine where to store it. When you have done this, click the Save button and System Monitor begins logging. When you want to stop logging, simply choose that option from the File pull-down menu.

Using the System File Checker 
You can use the System File Checker to periodically scan the system files on your computer to make sure they have not become corrupted and that the wrong version of a file hasn't been copied over the previously existing file. You can also use this tool to extract a system file from your Windows 98 CD-ROM.

In addition to checking your system files for errors, the System File Checker makes it much easier to extract system files from the installation disk.

Checking Files for Errors 
If you want to have System File Checker check your system files for errors, choose that option and click on the Start button located in that window. It will then scan your files and, in all likelihood, simply bring up a dialog box telling you how many files were examined and providing you with some other related information. However, depending on the tool's settings that you have selected using the Settings button, if the System File Checker notifies you that one or more of the files has some type of error, you can use it to extract a copy of that file from the installation disk.

Although a system file can be corrupted sometime after installation, it is also possible that either you or some application might accidentally delete one or more system files from your computer. System File Checker can notify you of any such potential problems and prompt you to extract the file to reinstall it on your system.

Before examining the file extraction capabilities of this tool, you should click on the Settings button found in the main window of this tool. This will bring up a separate tabbed window containing a number of different options from which you can choose. Here you can specifically tell the tool to check for changed and deleted files. You can also expand or limit the scope of files the utility checks, and you can create a custom verification data file that the tool will use to check system files for errors.

Extracting System Files 
If you have ever tried to extract a system file from a Windows 95 CD-ROM, you will be grateful for the ease with which you can extract system files using the System File Checker. Windows 95 requires users to run the Extract utility from the command line and use the proper syntax to successfully extract a file from the installation disk. The main problem with using Extract, however, is that you must know the cabinet file from which you want to perform the extraction. A cabinet file is a compressed set of files grouped together and having a .CAB extension. In most cases you do not know which cabinet file has the system file for which you are looking. Therefore, most people cannot extract system files without a lot of help.

The System File Checker makes this extraction process painless. You don't need to know which cabinet file the file you need is located in. All you have to know is the name of the file for which you are looking. Windows 98 should even recall the CD-ROM drive letter and the subdirectory on the Windows 98 CD-ROM on which the file is located. To extract a file, simply choose the option from the installation disk and enter the file's name into the text box. Click on the Start button and System File Checker will walk you through the steps needed to extract the file. The corrupted file will be backed up in case you want to reinstall it, and the extracted file will be placed in the appropriate location within your Windows 98 directory.

A Possible Limitation 
Although the System File Checker is a handy tool for detecting and fixing corrupted or missing system files, it has at least one limitation. Because some Windows 98 system files will be updated over time, the version of some of the system files on your installation disk will eventually become outdated. Therefore, unless you know that the system file you are extracting is the latest version, you might inadvertently extract an older version of that file in place of the newer file that has been deleted or corrupted in some way.

This is a significant limitation because some applications will probably require the newer version of that system file to function properly (or to function at all). If you encounter such a problem with a file you have extracted, you should try using the Update Wizard found within the Windows Update tool to check and see whether a newer version of that file is available from Microsoft. If so, you should download and install that update; this should then put your system back in proper working order.

Using the System Resource Meter 
One of the best system monitoring tools for everyday use supplied with Windows 98 is the System Resource Monitor. When loaded on your computer, this tool places an icon in your system tray that constantly updates you as to the level of system resources available for use by your computer. If you either double-click on the icon or right-click on the icon and choose Details, a window will appear that displays the current level of available resources.

Although this window displays the system resources tracked by this application, you can get a general idea of the level of available resources by looking at the Resource Meter's icon in the system tray. As the level in that icon goes down, you know that your system resources are getting lower. You can also get a reading of these resources without opening the Resource Meter window by moving your mouse over the icon in the system tray, at which time a ToolTip will appear containing the system resource levels.

You can keep an eye on your system resources at all times by using the System Resource Meter.

If you notice the level of system resources getting very low, you might try closing one or more open applications to see whether the resource level increases. If the color of the icon changes to yellow, you should immediately take action to close open applications and determine why your resources are getting low. It is important to act at this point because if the icon changes to red, it might be too late to close your open applications before the operating system freezes up, resulting in possible data loss. After the icon reaches yellow, but before it turns red, Windows 98 should bring up a warning and prompt you to close some of your open applications.

Sometimes programs with memory leaks and other such bugs can cause your system resources to steadily decrease over time while those programs are open. By using the System Resource Meter, you can be alerted to potential problems relating to such bugs so that you can take corrective action before your system crashes.

Using the Automatic Skip Driver Agent 
One of the common problems associated with personal computers is hardware conflicts. These conflicts can have any number of causes, such as corrupted or poorly written device drivers, more than one hardware device set to the same IRQ setting, and other such problems. Unfortunately, when these conflicts arise they can prevent all or part of your operating system from functioning properly.

To help provide a short-term fix for such problems, Microsoft has included a new utility in Windows 98 known as Automatic Skip Driver Agent. As the name might imply, this utility acts as a system agent that monitors the loading of hardware drivers on your system and looks for problems associated with such drivers. If a hardware device fails to respond during the installation or loading of Windows 98, this agent will display a dialog box informing you that there is a problem with the hardware device that could cause your system to stop responding. It will then ask you whether you want to automatically skip the loading of this driver from now on when you boot your computer. If you agree to this, Windows 98 will disable that driver and it will not be loaded until you attempt to fix the problem, such as by checking the System settings in the Control Panel.

Like some of the other tools discussed in this page, one way to load this utility is from the Tools pull-down menu in System Information. You can also load this program by clicking on the Start button and choosing Run. Enter asd in the text box that appears and click the OK button. Unless you have previously been notified of a problem, when you run this utility you will likely get nothing more than a simple dialog box stating that there are no current ASD critical operation failures on your computer, meaning that everything appears to be running fine.

Using the ActiveX Control Viewer 
If you have used Internet Explorer 3.0 or 4.0, the latter of which comes with Windows 98, you might be familiar with ActiveX controls. These objects are used on Internet and intranet sites to display data and graphics in advanced ways that you would normally expect to see only in a Windows application. The reason these objects might look like they are part of a Windows program is that, in many instances, these same objects are also used in Windows applications.

One problem with the use of ActiveX controls is that, unlike traditional Web page content, they have to be loaded and installed on your computer like most other system files. Additionally, over time they can accumulate and take up space on your hard drive; yet because of their data type they are not purged from your system when you clean your browser's cache file (which is referred to by the term "Temporary Internet files" in Internet Explorer).

The solution for this problem is the ActiveX Control Viewer. You won't find this tool within any program group on your computer. Rather, this is the official name for the tool used to display ActiveX control information within a special folder in Windows Explorer.

To use the ActiveX Control Viewer, use Windows Explorer to open the Downloaded Program Files folder located within your Windows 98 directory. Here you will likely see several ActiveX controls listed. These are controls that were downloaded over the Internet or your intranet when you viewed a Web page that used these controls. To find out more information about any control shown here, right-click on its icon and choose Properties. This will bring up a multitabbed Properties window containing information about this control.

The Properties window displays additional information about each control to help you decide whether it is needed for your system.

The main page in this window displays such information as the control's name and size. It might also contain a listing for the codebase for the control, which is usually an Internet or intranet address from which the control can be downloaded. When you open this Properties page, the class ID for the control is highlighted by default. If you are a Web page developer you can right-click on this highlighted information, choose Copy, and paste this information into the related Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) address on your Web page. This is an easy way to add an ActiveX control to your Web page without having to type out each character in the class ID.

If you determine you no longer need an ActiveX control found in this folder, right-click on the control's icon and choose Remove. Windows 98 will then uninstall the control (which requires a change to your system's Registry file) and delete it from your computer. If there are any other system files related to this control that are not used by any other application, you might also be prompted to remove those files as well.

Using the System Configuration Utility 
If you want to change some portions of the Windows 98 startup configuration, such as stopping it from loading some of the programs in your Startup group, you should consider using the System Configuration Utility. This tool lets you edit the Windows 98 startup files (WIN.INI, CONFIG.SYS, SYSTEM.INI, and AUTOEXEC.BAT), edit the contents of the Startup group, and use advanced settings to selectively load any or all of these elements.

To launch this utility, select it from the Tools pull-down menu in the System Information tool. Select each of the tabs to see what programs and other elements are loaded each time you start Windows 98. You can stop any of these from running when you boot up by deselecting them. If you choose the Advanced button on the main tab in this utility, you can make additional configuration changes to help troubleshoot problems in your system. However, you shouldn't make any changes unless you know what you are doing because the changes you make could result in serious problems, such as preventing your computer from booting into Windows 98.

Using Windows Help 
Windows 98 introduces a new version of Microsoft's on-line help: HTML-based Help. Although previous Windows and Windows NT operating systems use 16- and 32-bit versions of the WinHelp online help application, Windows 98 is the first Microsoft operating system to use this new form of help file built around the HTML programming language used in Web pages.

When you load Help by selecting it from the Start menu, you will note a new look and feel for this help format. The left pane of this window contains Contents, Index, and Search tabs that allow you to find and select help content, which is then displayed in the right pane. Both panes make liberal use of hyperlinks and other HTML features you might have seen on Web pages.

If you are accustomed to navigating within Web pages, you will feel right at home in the new HTML-based Windows Help.

The toolbar contains Back and Forward buttons similar to those found in a Web browser. By using these buttons, you can move back and forth between help pages you have viewed. The Options button allows you to do such things as print the displayed help article. If you don't like seeing the left pane and you would prefer to work solely in the right pane, click on the Hide button and the left pane will disappear. You can make it appear again by selecting the Show button (which replaces the Hide button). Clicking on the Web Help button will cause a page to appear in the right pane with links to Microsoft's technical support Web site.

Using the Windows Report Tool 
If you experience a problem with Windows 98 that you can't solve on your own through Windows Help and the tools discussed in this page, your next step before calling for technical support might be to report the problem to Microsoft by using the Windows Report Tool. Although you will find links that launch this tool within Windows Help, you can also launch this application at any time by choosing Run from the Start button, entering winrep into the text box that appears, and then clicking the OK button.

To use this tool, simply press the Tab button on your keyboard to move from field to field and enter the requested information. When you are done, click on the Next button and a browser window will appear from which you can submit the report to Microsoft (you will need to be connected to the Internet before sending this file). The Windows Report Tool allows you to send information to Microsoft about a problem you are experiencing.