Most of us are familiar with the Safe Mode in Windows. When you restart your Windows computer and start pressing the F8 key on your keyboard, you will enter the Safe Mode. The safe boot mode, uses a minimal pre-defined set of device drivers and services to start the Windows operating system.
Clean Boot State
On the other hand there is also the Clean Boot State which is used to diagnose and troubleshoot advanced Windows problems. If your computer is not starting normally, or if you receive errors when you start your computer that you cannot identify, you could consider performing a “clean boot.”
When you start the computer in clean boot, the computer starts by using a pre-selected minimal set of drivers and startup programs, and because the computer start with a minimal set of drivers, some programs may not work as you expected.
Clean-boot troubleshooting is designed to isolate a performance problem. To perform clean-boot troubleshooting, you must take a number of actions, and then restart the computer after each action.
How to perform Clean Boot
To enter a clean boot state, type msconfig in start search and hit Enter to open the System Configuration Utility. Click the General tab, and then click Selective Startup. Clear the Load Startup Items check box. Finally, ensure that Load System Services and Use Original boot configuration are checked.
Next, click the
Services tab. Select the
Hide All Microsoft Services check box. Now click
Disable all.
Click
Apply/OK and
restart the computer. This will put Windows into a clean boot state.
If the clean boot helped you fix the error, fine! Else in the General tab, also click to clear the Load System Services check box, click Apply/OK and restart.
To configure Windows to use the normal startup state, simply undo the changes.
Best to always create a system restore point first!
