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Essay on Troubleshooting Software Conflicts

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Troubleshooting Software Conflicts Programs running in the Background Sometimes you will run into the problem where two programs that are installed on your PC conflict with each other and refuse to run at the same time. It can be tricky to find the culprit, because you think that no other programs were running, so what could possibly conflict? You'd be surprised at how many programs are running on your PC right now. Take a look right now and be amazed. Push Control (Ctrl), Alternate (Alt) and Delete (Del) on your keyboard right now. You should now see a dialog box labeled Close Programs. In there is a list of some pretty funny looking names. Each one of those is a program running right now in the background. Didn't expect to see …show more content…

You can find the contents of the startup folder by going to Start/Programs/Startup. Didn't realize you had those items in there, did you? Then there is another not so obvious place: the Windows Registry. The registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun holds a list of programs to be loaded on Windows startup as well. You probably think how did they get in there since you didn't put them there. Some of them need to be running in the background to function properly, such as a virus scanner. They put themselves into a startup menu automatically when you install them. Others might not need to be there, but they load anyway to be available when you need them. Now that you know how to find out what programs you have running in the background and how they got there, let's talk about how to do some troubleshooting to find the culprit. Be systematic To find out which application is the conflicting one, you need to take a systematic approach. There are two ways to do this: You can shut down all other programs, make sure the conflict does not happen anymore, then turn them back on one by one, until the conflict happens again. Most likely the last program you turned on before the conflict reappeared is the culprit. The other option is to shut down one program at a time, until the conflict disappears. Most likely, the one program you just shut down is the culprit. Prevent them from loading

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