Although the Windows registry has largely superseded WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, these hangovers from the pre-Windows 95 era still play a part in Windows 98. You will encounter these files when reconfiguring your system to work better, or when troubleshooting problems.

This isn't the place to go into what you can do in these files. It's a book-sized subject and there is some advice in System Configuration Utility's help file. What we can tell you is that the days of hacking around in a text editor trying to find out what's wrong by enabling/disabling items are over. SCU brings the system files and the programs that start up automatically with Windows 98 under the control of one easy-to-use interface:

The first tab gives options you may need when problem solving – the ability to choose interactively during boot-up whether or not to run each item in CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT, or to exclude certain files from start-up processing. For the more technically aware the Advanced button offers these additional choices:

On the other tabs you can edit the start-up files, for example CONFIG.SYS:

Using the four buttons at the bottom, you can add, delete and edit individual lines. Oddly, there is no Delete button. To eliminate a line, edit it and delete the text. To disable a line temporarily, clear its checkbox.

INI files are shown in an outliner-style view, with the section headings listed as expandable branches:

Click the [+] and [–] symbols to expand/collapse a section. Once again, the checkboxes allow you to disable items – either individually, or entire sections. You cannot, however, edit the INI files from here, which is odd. Sometimes you need to add new items manually. For that you could use SysEdit – go to Start, Run and enter SYSEDIT,

Finally, on the Startup tab, you can view the programs that are run automatically when Windows 98 starts up:

Some of these are run by virtue of having shortcuts in the folder \WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp. Others are run from WIN.INI or from the registry. (To see the main list, run RegEdit and drill down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Run. More programs may be run from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ RunServices and adjacent Run... keys.)

Before using System Configuration Utility take note of these important points: