Troubleshooting Application and Service Fault Issues

Issues pertaining to specific applications or background services.

Applications Crashing

if application crashes, priority is to preserve any data that was being processed
- Save regularly
- Enable Windows File History feature
try to give the process time to become responsive
check event logs for possible causes
- identify if the crash is associated to a particular data file
if you cannot identify a specific problem, the generic solution is to check for an application update that addresses the issue
if update does not fix the issue:
- uninstall
- reinstall
- or perform repair installer if supported

if you see a message such as One or more services failed to start during the Windows load sequence:
- check Event Viewer or Services snap-in to identify the failed service
General Troubleshooting steps
- start or restart the service manually
  - services can become “stuck”
  - try setting to delayed start
- Verify that disabling one service has not inadvertently affected others
- Make sure that the service has sufficient privileges
- If a core Windows service is affected:
  - check system files
  - scan the disk for errors and malware
- f an application service is affected, try reinstalling the application
- Use regsvr32 to re-register the software component—a dynamic link library (DLL)—that the service relies upon
- Check whether the service is supposed to run
  - Faulty software uninstall routines can leave “orphan” registry entries and startup shortcuts
  - Use the System Configuration Utility (msconfig) or Registry Editor (regedit) to look for orphaned items

processes such as authentication and backup depend on time reported by the local PC being closely synchronized to the time kept by a server
some systems are intolerant of 30, or 60s discrepancies
each PC motherboard has a battery-powered real time clock (RTC) chip
- not reliable, authoritative time source
- relying on this can lead to clients and servers drifting out of sync
network services should be configured in a domain and use GPS-synchronized time sources or a pool of internet time sources
- sampling from a pool helps identify and resolve drifts
- clients can then be configured to use the server as authoritative time sources