How to Prevent Windows 8.1 from Crashing aka Rebooting

Microsoft recently released a Windows 8.1 as a free update to address shortcoming of Windows 8 and also introduces new features to make it looks more attractive and adaptable for end users. Sometimes, user complaining about this latest released OS that it crashes frequently, reboots or just hangs at mid after doing updates, installing applications or doing some minor system settings modifications. 

Although, Windows 8.1 is designed to perform robustly regardless the hardware or software combination you’re using. Sometimes, the situation just goes wired and your computer might start behaving abnormally. Windows 8.1 may hangs, freezes or reboots abruptly and there are several reasons which could this and investing for the exact cause might saves bunch of time / countless efforts. 

Below are the possible scenarios behind such problems and relevant solution that you could follow to resolve immediately. 

Hardware related problems

It’s always recommended to have all the hardware requirements successfully met for running Windows 8.1 and to avoid future troubles. If such requirements aren't met properly, your computer will start behaving strange and gives problematic situations mentioned earlier. 

It is also important to check the health status of all the hardware equipment such as Motherboard, GPU, overheating etc.  You can also use tools to check your PC for failing hardware and replace them to fix issues with your computer. 

Disable third party or malicious programs

Perform a thorough audit of your system to check for faulty programs or programs from not a trusted source. Open ‘Task Manager’ from the taskbar and carefully look for currently running programs. To close any programs immediately, right click on it and choose ‘Disable’. 

Avoid using multiple programs to run at startup as it can significantly increase the total time taken to start your PC and reduces overall performance. Moreover, programs from unauthorized source may prevents Windows to complete required operations normally. 

Use System Maintenance

System Maintenance is an inbuilt utility provided from Microsoft and located under Control Panel > System and Security > Action Center > Troubleshooting > Run Maintenance Tasks. To access Control Panel from your Windows 8.1 PC, simply navigate cursor to lower left corner of the screen and right click.

Be sure to run the system maintenance tasks using administrative privileges which ultimately increase the chances of getting your computer problem fixed easily. 

P.S. On the system maintenance wizard screen, click on ‘Advanced’ option to make ‘Run as Administrator’ option visible. 

Outdated or faulty drivers

Hardware manufacturers provide updates to their hardware driver frequently or occasionally. These updates will help your PC to perform faster, consume less energy and work in accordance with the latest application requirements. It’s recommended to check for driver updates at least once in a week, if you can’t do it regularly. Manufacturer website and third party tools can be used to check latest driver updates as well as install them immediately. 

The dark side is, if this isn’t done since long ago and there are multiple versions of driver has been released from manufacturer, you might found your computer giving freezes or hangs and prevents you to use it normally as you use it before. In worst cases, system may start rebooting in loop or throws black screen just after passing the Window booting screen. 

This problem looks obvious but once took place, you might face system inaccessibility and needs to address the issue first before using it any further. I’d recommend you to perform the following activities and see if it can fix the issue:

1. Start Windows update from Control panel and install all the updates. It’ll automatically scans hardware for driver updates and install it immediately. 
2. If the problem persists even after successfully installing all the available Windows updates, the second place you should see is the manufacturer website and carefully look if they’ve any recent updates for the particular driver. If so, download and install it manually without wasting a second. Device Manager is also used to check for driver updates. 
3. If the problem is surfaced after updating the driver to new version, you can press rollback from the device manager which brings in an earlier stable version of that particular driver. 

Check for Event log files (For Pros)

Every time your PC crashes or any event occurs, it maintains record that will includes the reasons, time and exact location where error took place. These record is known as Event logs aka minidump files, and can be found under C: /Windows/ Minidump Files. If you find no record in that location, most probably your system isn’t configured to store minidump files. You can configure your computer to store minidump files after every failure occurs on your PC. 

These record will help analyzing the exact problem behind crashes so could you could address it, if possible. As the record contains all the details pros needed to suggest possible solutions, you’ll need to provide them at first. 

 Hopefully, these solutions are capable enough to resolve errors behind Windows 8.1 crashes. If the problem keeps occurring again and again please post your situation in the comment form below and we’ll provide solution ASAP. 

If you’ve already faced this problem and addressed the issue using different solution/tricks that isn’t mentioned here, feel free to share it with our readers. 

4 Troublesome Memory Problems and Their Solution

Problems related to your computer memory are quite frequent and occurs, either sooner or later. Your computer might become unbootable/inaccessible if memory problem took place. The only thing which makes you happy is, there are several fixes already available to deal with such tragic situations either from Microsoft or from third party sources. 

But in some cases, all the possible fixes fail to address these memory errors and you may eventually lose any unsaved data or might not able to access your computer. Probably you’re facing this now and that’s why landed here to get 100% working solution(s), right??

If that’s the case, take a deep breath and carefully read the article. It’ll explain each and everything you need to know about computer memory problems along with working solutions to bring back your PC back again in healthy state as it was before. 

Types of memory problems and their possible solutions

If your Windows computer has facing any memory problems, it will detect it automatically and offers subsequent solution such as memory diagnostic tool. If Windows has somehow not detected it, you have to manually find the problem and apply solutions accordingly. 

There are some common symptoms mentioned below, that happens only when the error is related to your computer memory: 

Problem 1) Strange Behavior

When memory problems strikes, your computer may start behaving abruptly such as sudden system shutdown, freezes, blue screens etc. There are other factors which may also cause this, but digging for memory problems first will save time and efforts. 

Solution: Use Memtest86

To test and make sure that the computer has suffering from memory problems, you can use a free memory diagnostic utility, called memtest86 . You’ll need to arrange a different computer other than the one with problems, to create a bootable CD and investigate the errors. This tool require you to shut down the problem computer before it begin analyzing.

It’ll take some time before finally producing the results. On the result screen, you can see helpful information like the failing address, good & bad memory location, error count etc. If you see some red line highlighted with some information on it, most probably the computer has suffering from serious memory problems and you’ll need to replace either one or both the RAM sticks. 

Problem 2) Black Screen

After pressing the power button, the computer not load successfully and may hangs at the black screen just after passing the ‘booting windows’ screen. Highly suspected cause would be faulty or damaged computer memory which prevents Windows to load properly. Other hardware problems such as CPU, motherboard or faulty fan could contribute towards the computer black screen but leaving them for last is recommended. 

Solution: Running Inbuilt Memory Diagnostic Tool

This is an inbuilt utility and comes preinstalled with the latest Windows operating system such as Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. As soon as you get the memory error notification window, click on any of two available options to check memory problems: Restart now and check for memory problems (recommended) and check for problems the next time I start my computer. 

As the name suggest, you can choose to run memory diagnostic immediately or the next time you start your computer. In case you’re running it immediately, make sure you’ve saved all your work and closed all the open programs. Once the scan is completed, the computer will restart automatically and gives you the produced results. If the problem is memory chip related, you’ll need to contact the manufacturer to get it replaced, if it’s in warranty. 

There are options to further customize the scanning even further. When the scan starts, Press F1 and adjust the settings for better results:

Test Mix: Basic, standard or extended scan is available. You can choose extended for detailed and thoroughly checking the memory problems. 

Cache: choose the desired cache settings such as default. On or off. 

Pass Count:You can choose to run this test 3 to 5 times repeatedly. The longer pass count you perform, the better result will produce.

Problem 3) No Lights on the monitor:

After pressing the power button, you can’t see any display on the monitor or the monitor lights keeps blinking for a long time. Moreover, you can’t hear any beep sound that computer does previously. The beep sound normally indicates that the computer is in healthy state and hardware parts are working properly. 

Solution: To address this issue, you’ll need to clear the dust inside the CPU case or take off the RAM sticks and clean it. Again reinsert it and see if the computer starts this time. If the problem still persist even after cleaning every bit of dust from the CPU case, it’s better to look out for the other faulty hardware parts. 

Problem 4) Faulty RAM Sticks

It might be possible that the any or all of your computer RAM sticks has gone bad and couldn’t be used any longer. Possible causes could be memory overage, faulty RAM sticks delivered from the manufacturer or circuit failure.

Solution: All you can do is to replace the RAM sticks and use a new one. If it’s not in guarantee, you can ask manufacturer for replacement. 

There are various other causes responsible for making your computer memory unstable and later make your system completely inaccessible. It has emerged as one of the most troublesome problem and occurs in 67% cases of computer problems. Either you can reset all the memory and start from scratch or can investigate the possible causes and hunt for solutions over here and there. 

No matter how serious the memory problem is, you always have risks to lose your valuable data on the system and may go through list of tools to recover data. It’s advisable to take a proper backup copy and update it frequently to always have the latest copy stored so you can never loose even a single piece of data. 

How to get rid of Google Chrome Keychain Access message?

Few things on OS X Mac becomes to annoyed users to extreme limits. One such thing is getting a ridiculous message through Keychain Access application, while someone is working on Google Chrome browser.

Below is the screenshot of the Chrome’s irritating message that is seeking request to access confidential information for FACEBOOK.COM. Now, this is something that a user may not understand in first encounter. To me, it meant like, it is asking to save some of my personal information (maybe user-id, password, email) for a particular site forever. And, in my absence any one can login through my account with the help of already saved information.

However, in my working experience on Google Chrome on Mac, I hardly came through the above message. But when I did came, it become a series of bad events as this message continued to show up again and again.

No matter, I clicked any of the 3 options (Always Allow, Deny, Allow) in the above alert message; it came back time after time.  This added more gunpowder to the already heated fire. To my agony, I tried ‘Clearing the History’, ‘Cookies’, ‘Caches’ and even tried out system restarts. But, to all efforts in vain, this message still showed up like a hardcore disease.

Fortunately, a problem no matter how serious in case, always have some solution or fixes. And, in the above case, a fix was available which I tried & resulted positive. Today, I would be sharing the same solution so that some other user, who is unable to understand this event, may reach to the solution.

How & Where from the problem came to existence?

Interestingly and may be hard to believe, the above problem raised because of OS X ‘s own browser which is “SAFARI”. The day I installed Chrome on Mac, I hardly used Safari for my professional work. Yes, I did few times launched Safari to fix up few things and that is when I clicked the below message.

While on Safari, I opened Facebook.com and unknowingly clicked the ‘YES’ option. And that is when, the Safari saved my personal information for the site Facebook.com to Keychain Access application.

I was unaware of the fact that, Safari saves the information (like passwords) to Keychain Access, while Google Chrome simple looks them as Web form Password. This also makes the Chrome to request for the saved information from Keychain Access. And which is why, the all problem begins to appear on Chrome in form of message repetitions.

As mentioned above, it hardly matters which option does the user clicks to close the access message. Beyond few clicks, the message might hide away, but a mere refresh of that webpage will make the access message reborn again. Repetition of this message is the reason why it is one of the most ugly appearing errors on OS X Mac. Thankfully, no such event occurs on Windows.

I also understood, since the information was saved in Keychain Access and not in Chrome, all the efforts like deleting history on Chrome and restarting the Mac is wasted. If I had known about it earlier, I shouldn’t have click on the ‘YES’ button when Safari asked to save the password for a particular website.

Since, the message came from the Keychain Access and something needs to be done there, I launched K.A. via Finder<Application<Utilities path. Double clicked the application to bring in front.

The above is the screenshot of the Keychain Access application. Use the search box to enter the name of the website which was asking for permissions. In my case, it was our beloved social site – facebook.com

The moment, I entered just the first four letters of the Facebook.com, the above windows was presented to me. This clearly suggests that K.A. has been doing some activity in the background related to saving user’s information. And, that too was initiated on my own personal request (remember clicking Yes on Safari).

Curiosity, I made a right-click to the facebook.com (Password not saved) option and was presented with below options.

1. Copy Password to Clipboard
2. Copy “wwwfacebook.com (Password not saved)”
3. Delete “wwwfacebook.com (Password not saved)”
4. Go There
5. Get Info

From the above-mentioned options, I knew, that the 3rd option might bring success for me, so I proceeded with the Delete “wwwfacebook.com (Password not saved)”option. And, the below little window appeared.

Obviously, I was very sure about the option and proceeded with the “DELETE” button. And soon, the www.facebook.com option from the Keychain Access windows was wiped off.

So, the day started with lots of unnecessary irritation caused by the Keychain Access window, asking to save my confidential information. In the midst of all these, I got to know, from where the problem aroused and how to tackle it. By the end of the day, it was a new learning and the irritating message was also put to sleep.  

If you are being annoyed continuously for the same reason for any website, then follow the steps and resolve it.

How to Resolve: “Your startup disk is almost full”?

Every Mac has a hard drive that possesses enough space to hold pool of data involving MUSIC, VIDEOS, DOCUMENTS, APPLICATIONS & OTHER such data. A Macintosh hard drive, say 500GB can have up to millions of sectors that sustain every single files of an application or a folder. A file is made to occupy some sector of the hard drive on the command of the OS X itself.  All these activities are performed on the back-end and a user may not have a clue of it. This is the part of an OS, and OS X takes care of it professionally.

Coming back to the OS X hard drive, it must be partitioned to ease storing of files & folders in an organized manner. In a house, we have several rooms like the dining & bedroom and each room has its significance. Likewise, the hard drive must have several partitions so that OS X can find ease in managing the data aprioristically.  Not only the OS X, but user too benefits from creating partitions of the hard drive. This way, user can dedicate partitions for saving their music, videos, study-material and so on. OS X also, allows another version of the OS X to stay on a partition of the hard drive. Thus, partitioning a hard drive has several uncountable benefits to both OS X & user.   

Macintosh OS (Startup-Disk): By default, OS X resides on the drive named Macintosh OS. You may choose to have another alias for the same drive (or purpose) but by default, the Macintosh OS holds the OS X, and is undoubtedly the heart of the Mac system. No matter under what circumstances, no one would prefer to mess with this partition of the hard drive.   

With handy Disk Utility, creating multiple partitions on a single drive is now a child’s play and every Mac user is aware of it. Macintosh OS has no significance to saving user’s personal data but it has lots of importance in holding files of installed applications. Be it Apple’s own apps that come bundled with the OS X or downloaded third party apps, all find home in Macintosh OS. Partition. 

Your Startup Disk is almost full

No one would ever wish to have a warning message displaying that ‘Your Startup Disk is almost full’, and that too on Mac start-up disk.

Above is an image of the warning message in its original form.

So, their lies an option to tick the check box included in the window and forgets about the warning message for next time. Yes, a user may choose to do it but this is something that shouldn’t be ignored. As far the performance of Mac OS X is concerned, user shouldn’t take this warning message lightly. The message however, prompts that the Start-Up Disk (Macintosh OS, incase) is running out of space due to plenty of applications (data) installed on it.

How to start diagnosing the grey areas of the disk in question?

It’s an obvious fact that free spaces for the OS X boot disk is need to created so that it doesn’t choke. However, I would suggest not launching the disk and starting deleting files & apps randomly just to create few GBs of free spaces. It will be good if some homework is done before performing the partition cleansing.

• Select the partition & hit Command + I. This will only let you know what amount of disk space is occupied or available. Recommended for an overview of the OS X partition.

• Click Apple Logo<<About This Mac<<More Info<<Storage.

The above is an example of space occupied by data for all partitions, including the OS volume.

Fortunately, my OS partition doesn’t looks cluttered, but for the user who just received “Your Startup Disk is almost full” message would view an otherwise display of the partition OS. The cluttered overview of the OS volume will let you know the reason behind the OS X prompting that message on Mac.

Cleaning Grey Areas of OS disk:Starting from Minor to Major areas that can help achieve free spaces for start-up disk.

1. Trash:A folder that should be emptied timely, but is left ignored at times.
2. Login-Items: Login items are not a necessity to be on OS X Mac. Better shut them off. Do so by navigating through System Preferences<<Accounts & Users<<Switch to Login Item tab. Click (-) minus button to remove apps from tray.
3. Download Folder: Like, Trash folder, the Download folder also faces neglection by the user. Over a period of time, the data inside the Download folder becomes large & unmanageable. Better to empty the download folder once the purpose is solved.
4. Restart Mac: This minor tip is also helpful for OS X to refresh itself. 

Tips 1 - 4 are quite general in nature and may not have an immediate effect on the disk size. Though minor, they are useful in grabbing few but much needed disk spaces. Now, below are some major tips to remove the waning message “Your Startup Disk is almost full”, from appearing again.

1. Empty Cache folder: If you don’t care you have a cache folder on Mac OS X, and then calculate how much the caches could have eaten up spaces? To know about the size of the caches, navigate though Macintosh OS<<Library<<Caches folder and hit Command + I. 
2. Log files: Like the caches, logs too reside on OS X boot disk until they are cleaned. Now, logs are small in size but again, a neglected log folder may accumulate up to near about some GBs of spaces. Since, we are looking for areas where free spaces can be added, it is better to trash unwanted/unused Log files.
3. Archive old files: If you have moved on to newer data, old files may have become least important for you. What you can do is archive the older data and shift to some removable media and grab free spaces for partition. 
4. Uninstall Apps: No point of keeping such apps that you do not run or had not run from last 3-6 months. A free tool like Onyx will help you find those apps, which you might want to eliminate. (Please Note that: Onyx is a free tool that speedup the performance of the Mac, however, to analyze disk of the Mac OS X, prefer Disk Utility or some other professional tool).
5. Duplicates: Willingly or unwillingly, some amount of duplicate data is created on the folders. Use Onyx to locate duplicate files from the OS X partition.
6. Use a professional tool: If the data size of Mac disk is huge and beyond the scope of human time & effort, then switch to a non-Apple performance booster tool for OS X. Some in the list are:

• Stellar Speedup Mac ($29, free to download)
• Macpaw ($39.95, free to download)
• CleanGenius ($29.95, free to download)

The above-mentioned tools are free to download and display previews of all unwanted apps, data and files to a user. To remove files, all of them require activation code.

Stellar Speedup Mac in action on Startup-Disk claiming almost 3 GB of free spaces & running.

The Mac cleanup software is only recommended when the data on the disk is too huge to handle. Some may agree that, professionals such as video-editor do install large apps, creates new data day-to-day. It becomes somewhat difficult for them to manage partitions and supply them the required free spaces.

However, if the data on your Start-Disk is manageable then follow the above tips to eliminate the warning message “Your Startup Disk is almost full”.