I'm running Vista Home Premium SP2, it constantly freezes up (crashes?). I boot back up in safe mode, restart with basic services/drivers and after restart enable all microsoft and my McAfee stuff, works fine. Question...I have some (I'm guessing) common registry issues to clean up, will this help toward fixing my problem? I'll back up the registry before fixing the issues. Thanks.
Cleaning the registry usually doesn't fix problems, but helps the PC run smoother.
You can clean up the registry, but back it up first.
Cleaning the Registry can sometimes fix problems with badly uninstalled programs.
It will never make the PC run smoother. There are thousands of keys in the Registry - deleting two or three hundreds will not make any noticeable change (unless the PC has serious problems)
Try updating your drivers.
http://www.ma-config.com/en/services/60,fi...he-drivers.html << You can try this to find updates for your drivers. (don't install drivers in Beta version )
Hi Ranchman
It's also quite possible you have an application or (as Aethec suggests) a driver that's playing up.
You could use various utilities like this one from Sysinternals to temporarily disable your start-up programs and drivers (so with that particular tool you'd be looking at the Logon and Drivers tabs).
Use with caution - you need to be fairly sure of what you're doing or at least be confident in your ability to restore your system back to a working point.
If it's a recent problem try disabling the applications you installed last, and work backwards. The Windows stuff is generally well-behaved; try looking at third-party apps first. Also if you're disabling a driver (particularly a third-party one) it makes sense to look for a corresponding start-up app to disable - the app may well not work without the driver. And I'd leave the Windows drivers alone.
The simplest and safest route is just to disable start-up programs at first.
Either way make a note of what you're doing. You can always boot back up into safe mode and re-enable everything.
Obviously the whole process can be quite time-consuming to pin-point a problem; neither is there any guarantee that this will identify it