CompTIA A+® Certification All-In-One For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

4.2. Configuration Utilities

This section discusses many of the configuration utilities that ship with the Windows OS. These utilities provide easy ways to modify configuration files and the Registry.

4.2.1. System Configuration utility

The System Configuration utility (see Figure 4-4) is one of the newer utilities for maintaining settings on your Windows computer. To launch System Configuration, run msconfig.exe. This utility can change many aspects of your system startup. To use this utility, you need to be a member of the computer's Administrators group.

Figure 4.4. The initial window for System Configuration allows you to modify the basic system files.

The six tabs in the Windows XP version of this utility allow you to launch the System Restore utility, expand files, perform selective boots, modify the loaded drivers in system.ini and win.ini, change the boot options in boot.ini, and change the services and applications that are loaded at boot time.

Even though the Windows Vista version has only five tabs (General, Boot, Services, Startup, and Tools), it offers similar functionality to the Windows XP version.

Use System Configuration to do the following:

• Create custom startup configurations (for troubleshooting)

• Perform a selective startup, which processes only some of the ...