You might have come across a situation where your computer is giving you some major problem and you are just unable to reach or hire any computer professional to help you out. Well, here are a few tips, that will help you to troubleshoot and fix computer issues on your own. I’ll try to explain in layman’s terms as possible.
Troubleshoot Windows like an IT Pro
Before you begin, some of you, may want to take a look at these Basic Windows Troubleshooting Tips.
Looking for Clues in Event Viewer
When a program crashes or freezes it will log somewhere what went wrong. So the first step is to find out the logs. The best place to start is to check the Event Viewer. In most cases, when a program crashes it will record it under Event Viewer if the programmer has designed his program to do so.
To access the Event Viewer go to the Start Menu and under search type in “Event Viewer” and click on it. There will be few different types of logs under there. “Windows Logs” is what we are looking for. When you expand Windows Logs it will give four different logs:
- Application
- Security
- Setup
- System
First, start off with Application Log. Select Application Log and looks in the right-side panel there you might see hundreds of logs sorted by the date and time. You have to look for the ones that logged the same date and time when your application crashes. You’ll be looking for Errors that are marked in Red. You can ignore Information and Warnings.
Most of the times, for application crashes then Level will be “Error” and the source will be “App crash” or “Application crash”. You have to double click on it open the log. There you’ll find lot of information.
Here is an example:
First of all, read the error in General section carefully looks for keywords such as your application name and specific dll’s or exe’s. Capture that information because those are the clues that would lead you to the answer.
For example in this Event Log the Source is “Side by Side” it doesn’t point to any specific program in the title but the log is the same time by Movie Maker crashed. So I opened it up and went through the error in the general log.
Activation context generation failed for “c:\program files (x86)\windows live\photo gallery\MovieMaker.Exe”.Error in manifest or policy file “c:\program files (x86)\windows live\photo gallery\WLMFDS.DLL” on line 8. Component identity found in manifest does not match the identity of the component requested. Reference is WLMFDS,processorArchitecture=”AMD64″,type=”win32″,version=”1.0.0.1″. Definition is WLMFDS,processorArchitecture=”x86″,type=”win32″,version=”1.0.0.1″. Please use sxstrace.exe for detailed diagnosis.
Now it shows that Movie Maker has crashed because MovieMaker.exe belongs to Movie Maker and is also referring to Window Photo because for the location of that dll. So something is causing the whole Windows Live package components to crash.
The next step is to search for the error online because it’s for sure that you’re not the only person who got this error message. Either you could go to Microsoft Events and Errors Message Center and search for the Event ID i.e. in this case Event ID: 35 (See in the picture) or you could search for this error message on the Internet using your favorite search engine.
Note: One important thing you have to remember is to choose the best site when you search for your answers because there will be few sites that will ask you to download “Registry Cleaners” as a part of their solution or content to fix the error which you need to pay for. Trust me most of them are scams don’t fall for it. And in any case, a Registry Cleaner does not fix such errors.
Instead look for answers on quality websites or forums like Microsoft Help, Microsoft Answers, Microsoft Docs, etc. You may also find some articles in the Microsoft KB center. So in my scenario, I searched in TechNet Event and Error message center which took me to Microsoft KB976229, which talks of ‘SideBySide Event ID 35 is logged in the Application log when you start Windows Live Movie Maker on a 64-bit Windows operating system’.
Environment Specific vs. Program Specific
A program can crash due to different reasons. We have to find out if it’s specific to your environment i.e. OS or Windows Profile. Or is it the program itself? The best way to test it first to enable the Build-in Administrator.
Because built-in administrators have full privileges and no restrictions whatsoever. Also testing in other user profiles is of no help because some programs would have preferences (User settings) saved into the Application Data folder – so if those preferences are corrupted Programs can act weirdly.
So test your application in a new Windows Profile i.e. built-in administrator and see if it works fine. If it works, then you could either create a new Windows Profile and move your settings or remove the User settings folder which would be located under the Application Data folder.
To access the application data folder go to Start Menu and under search type in %appdata% and look for the folder there, it would mostly have the application name on it. Sometimes the preference folder also might be under the Program Data folder. To access that type in %programdata%. It’s a good idea to just rename the folder instead of deleting them because if that’s not the issue, you could always revert back.
If it fails there as well then we know not the user setting that’s causing the problem. The next step would be to reinstall the application. There are few things you have to remember when you reinstall, always reboot the system after un-installation. Then try to download an updated version from the software’s website and install it and test it.
Check Third-party applications
Sometimes some other application might interfere with your application’s working. So in order to rule that out you could always reboot the system in Selective Startup or Clean Boot State. That could rule out that possibility.
Make sure you also disable your security software. Because it’s very common to hear that Internet Security software may be blocking that particular application itself or one of the dependency.
Refer Support Website
Always check the support website of that program. Because you might never know the issue you experiencing might be reported and the application developers might have already posted a way to fix it. Most of the commercial software will have a Knowledge base. Most of the time if you visit their official website under the support section you might find a FAQ or Knowledge base articles.
Search for the keyboard instead of just searching for the entire error. For an example of the error is specifying any dlls or specific error code search for those in their support article.
Is it Windows itself?
It’s also very likely that Windows itself is the culprit. Because the software completely depends on the OS to run if one of the System files or Dependency is failing then your application will crash.
For example, if the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable version is corrupted you might get SidebySide errors all over the Event Viewer. Or if your .NET Frameworks is corrupted you might see .NET run time errors in Event Viewer and the application will crash. So it’s best to run System File Checker or SFC /SCANNOW. With it, you check the integrity of your Windows 10. You could also consider repairing your Windows OS.
Advanced users could also use a great application called Process Explorer to find most of the advanced troubleshooting steps.
There are a few tips that would get you started. If you find difficulty in following feel free to search using our TWC Search Bar.
