

If you check Safe Boot, you can then pick from four options: Minimal, Alternate shell, Active Directory repair and Network. The Advanced options button will normally only be used by programmers writing device drivers for actual hardware. Let’s start with Boot options as that’s the main point of this tab. This is an important tab because it has a lot of options for how Windows starts up. Now that we have a clear understanding of the General tab and how it’s connected to both the Services and Startup tabs, let’s talk about the second tab: Boot. Continue this process until you find your problem service or startup item. If not, you go to the Services or Startup tab again and check another item. You restart the computer and see if that service or startup item is causing the issue with your system. The way to do that is to check the appropriate box on the General tab and then go to Services or Startup, click Disable all, and then check off only one item. The only reason to do selective startup and check one or both items is to figure out if a particular service or startup item is causing problems. It should be noted that if you chose selective startup with a checkmark in both Load system services and Load startup items, then that’s pretty much the same thing as doing a normal startup because everything is enabled.

With the Load startup items box, you can only check it with a checkmark, which either enables all the startup items on the Startup tab or disables all of them. Now if you go back to the General tab, click on Selective startup again and check the Load system services box with an actual checkmark, you’ll see that ALL services are checked under the Services tab not just a select few. That is significant because if you click on the Services tab and scroll through, you’ll see that only a handful of services are checked. You’ll notice that when you click Diagnostic startup and click Apply, the Load system services box is not checked, but is filled in entirely. If you find you need to use a Control Panel item or a program that simply won’t run on Safe Mode, then you can try diagnostic mode, which loads less than a normal startup, but more than Safe Mode. In diagnostic mode, you get more drivers and services started by default than with Safe Mode, which I explain below. Also, when you select Diagnostic startup and click Apply, you will see that it automatically selects Selective startup with only the Load system services box filled in.
