windows-ops

Helps with

Slow or worsening boot, silently failing drives, crashes with no obvious cause, an HKLM startup entry you can't disable without admin, BSODs that leave no dump, unexplained UAC prompts, 'is it safe to unplug this drive?', cloning a failing drive, no-boot recovery, remote diagnostics, and a hot or out-of-commit machine with no boot-time explanation. Where each signal lives: references/symptom-guide.md.

The Universal Insight

Windows tells you what's wrong if you ask the right log in the right way. Most users (and most tutorials) reach for Task Manager. The actual diagnostic signal lives in the Event Log, the Registry's StartupApproved key, the storage driver's reset events, and the kernel's bugcheck records. This skill packages the queries that turn noise into a verdict.

The most common diagnostic failure: treating symptoms in isolation. "Slow boot" → disable startup apps. "BSOD" → reinstall drivers. "Random crashes" → memtest. These are reasonable last resorts, but the data to identify the actual cause is sitting in the System log untouched. Always audit before treating.

The Diagnostic Ladder

Walk down the layers in order. Each rung has a binary outcome: