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If the system is not able to startup and show the desktop and Guru, there are a number of function key combinations that you can use on system startup to help you to diagnose and hopefully fix the problem. Most configuration problems may be resolved by restoring the configuration from an Archive. This procedure is the same for an EPC or Virtual Workstation.

To Recover System Configuration From Archive:

  1. While first booting, after the BIOS screen, while the a white blob appears with OS/2 in the upper left corner, hold ALT key on the keyboard and press F1 key (ALT+F1) to enter the Recovery Choices screen. (See Figure 1)
  2. Choose 1 to restore the most recent Archive and continue booting. (See Figure 2) Please note that any recent configuration changes to the Desktop may be lost when recovering the archive.
  3. If that does not resolve the issue, then try an older Archive by rebooting, ALT+F1 to Recovery Screen, and try 2.
  4. If that still does not resolve the issue, then try an older Archive by rebooting, ALT+F1 to Recovery Screen, and try 0 to restore factory settings.
  5. If this does not resolve the issue, please contact [email protected] for next steps.

Recovery Choices

There are two function key combinations that can be activated while the white blob appears on the screen followed by the word OS/2. (See Figure 1) These are Alt-F1(hold ALT, press F1) keys which will interrupt the boot process and take you to a recovery menu, and Alt-F2 keys which will continue the boot while displaying the name of each device driver as it is loaded.

The recovery menu that comes up when you press Alt-F1 contains a number of options to help you in getting your system to start although in some cases your system may not be recovered by these as well as you might like. Options contained in this menu include:

    • ESC to continue with the normal boot process
    • F2 to boot to a command line without starting the graphical interface. From here you can run MAKEINI to rebuild your desktop or use TEDIT (a small command line editor) to fix corrupted files.
    • F3 to reset the video mode back to VGA, bypassing the installed graphics driver.
      DO NOT PRESS F3! Follow the steps in - Display Out of Range with 1920x1080, Reset Desktop Resolution https://roos.com/docs/RBEH-BZW29K
    • F4 to restart the system with a maintenance desktop. From here you can use the selective reinstall option to rebuild the corrupted part of your system.
    • F5 enables FULL hardware detection.
    • F6 disables hardware detection. This is useful if you have problems with plug and play adapters.
    • 0 recovers from the original archive of your system setup that was taken when your system was first installed.
    • 12, or 3 to restart from one of the last three archives that you created.
    • Any other custom configurations that you have created and added to the menu by updating the ALTF1BOT.SCR file.
Using alt-F2 to display the drivers as they are loaded will help you to identify the driver giving the problems if your system hangs part way through the boot process.

Another key combination that you can use once all device drivers have loaded and the screen has changed to a single color is ctrl-shift-F1 which will stop any programs that were running when the system last shut down from restarting and stop any open folders from being reopened. To permanently achieve this same effect change the RESTARTOBJECTS= parameter in the CONFIG.SYS file to read SET RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY.

To Adjust the Recovery Display Timeout:
It may be difficult to catch the "white blob and OS/2" because modern monitor's typically turn off when a signal is not found. The screen may not be ON before the the white box appears, so we can set the delay on the recovery choices on the desktop properties.

  1. From the desktop, choose Properties from the right mouse button menu. (See Figure 2)
  2. Choose Archives tab, and check the Display at each system startup and enter a value between 5 and 30 as the Timeout seconds down on the bottom in the Recovery choices section.
  3. Shutdown the system and wait for it to restart, should take about 10 seconds, do not cycle the power and you should see a Recovery Choices Screen.
  4. Enter the number for the latest archive (typically 1) and the system will restore that archive and continue to boot.

Figure 1: Boot Screen OS/2 Prompt

Figure 2: Desktop > Properties

Figure 3: Desktop > Archives

Figure 4: Recovery Choices




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