MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-270): Installing ...

5-32 Chapter 5 Configuring Windows XP Professional
System Startup
When you first turn on the computer, the system displays the Please Select The Operating
System To Start screen, which lists the available operating systems if more than
one is installed. By default, the system chooses one of the operating systems and displays
a countdown timer. If you do not choose another operating system, the system
starts the preselected operating system when the countdown timer reaches zero or
when you press ENTER. Modify the options under System Startup to determine which
operating system is preselected, how long the countdown timer runs, and whether to
display the boot menu. You are also given the option of modifying the BOOT.INI file
manually, but it is usually better to allow Windows XP Professional to modify the file
rather than attempting to do so manually.
System Failure
The four recovery options that Windows XP Professional provides to assist administrators
in the event of a system failure are described in Table 5-6.
Important You must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group to set the
options in the Startup And Recovery dialog box.
Table 5-6 Recovery Options
Option Additional Information
Write An Event To
The System Log
Send An
Administrative Alert
Select this check box to have Windows XP Professional write an event
to the system log when a system stops unexpectedly. Read Chapter 18,
“Using Windows XP Tools,” for more on events and the system log.
Select this check box to have Windows XP Professional send an
administrative alert to administrators when the system stops
unexpectedly.
Automatically Restart Select this check box to have Windows XP Professional reboot whenever
the system stops unexpectedly. Clear this check box if you are
troubleshooting a computer that continually reboots itself due to a
startup error.
Write Debugging
Information
This section allows you to specify whether Windows XP Professional
should record the contents of memory to a debugging file when there
is a system failure and how much of the memory contents to write.
Typically, debugging information is used by Microsoft support technicians
to help identify and solve problems. The first option allows you
to specify what information Windows XP Professional should write to
the dump file: Memory.dmp. The following four choices are available:
■ None Nothing is written to the dump file.