CertiGuide to A+ (A+ 4 Real)  9  Chapter 4: Diagnosing and Troubleshooting in the Windows OS       9  Troubleshooting Utilities

Event Viewer 1 Task Manager

The Device Manager is the tool to examine and configure software configurable devices. Tool to install, deinstall, update device drivers.

Here’s what the symbols mean:

A Black exclamation point (!) on a yellow field tells there is a problem!

• A red X, as on the picture means a device is disabled. You can disable a device for troubleshooting if you suspect it causes problems. Right click on a device to get a menu.
  
  
• A blue “i” indicates that Use Automatic Settings feature is not selected for the device and that resource was manually selected.
  
  
• A yellow question mark “?” indicates drivers are not installed for this device.
  
  
• A green question mark “?” (Windows Me only) means a compatible driver for this device is installed.

When you install a Plug’n’Play device it should be easy. Windows automatically configures everything, assigns resources from the following: Interrupt request (IRQ) line numbers, Direct memory access (DMA) channels, Input/output (I/O) port addresses, memory addresses.

If the Device Manager finds a problem, that two devices conflict, you need to change the settings manually, in the Device Manager.

Event Viewer 1 Task Manager