Help: Getting Out of Safe Mode

Subject: Getting Out of Safe Mode
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 12:51 AM

My computer is running in Safe Mode, which I think is the mode that keeps it safe from me using it. Anybody know how to get OUT of it? All the Help info is about how to get INTO it... Thanks!

Subject: RE: Help: Getting Out of Safe Mode
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 01:06 AM

Mrrzy, just try restarting windows and it will probably try to start up in normal mode next time.

If you want to force a mode in Windows, hold F8 down at the start of Windows loading - you shoud get a menu of all options available.

Jon

Subject: RE: Help: Getting Out of Safe Mode
From: Jeri
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 07:48 AM

I seem to recall in Win95, you could click Start button, click Shut Down, then select Restart (not "restart in safe mode).

I'm not sure if your computer does this every time you start it - it shouldn't. I never had Safe mode happen unless I shut down the computer the wrong way. If you shut down the right way - Start, Shut Down - it shouldn't happen.

Subject: RE: Help: Getting Out of Safe Mode
From: Alan of Australia
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 10:30 AM

G'day,
You might have a hardware/driver incompatibility problem.

Hold down the F8 key as Jon suggested & then choose Step-by step confirmation from the menu. Choose No for some of the options until you find a combination which works OK. Keep trying until you narrow it down to one device.

Some suggestions:-

Choose Yes for Process the system registry.

Choose No for all entries in autoexec.bat & config.sys. (ideally a win9x system should not have either although most do. Get rid of them if you can)

Yes for Create startup log file. It might tell you something.

Yes for Load the Windows graphical user interface.

Yes for Load all windows drivers, but then No for each of the individual drivers (usually *.vxd files).

Keep doing all the above but choosing Yes for more drivers each time until you narrow it down to one device. Then you still have a problem, but at least you know what's causing it. What you do next depends on what you find.

Cheers,
Alan

Subject: RE: Help: Getting Out of Safe Mode
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 11:52 AM

Wow. Will try the easy ones first, but some additional info: it just suddenly refused to start up normally today after behaving fine the day before, and being shut down properly. All relevent troubleshooters seem to be assuming that something new has been improperly added but I haven't loaded anything in months (AOL sometimes updates itself but not yesterday). Have rebooted, cold and hard. Have done stuff calculated to get me into You Didn't Shut Down Right You Naughty User, but it doesn't. Ran Scandisk anyway, and it kept quitting because programs were writing when nothing was running. When it finally ran it found nothing wrong. I do defrag regularly but not yesterday.

Subject: RE: Help: Getting Out of Safe Mode
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 12:05 PM

Well, SOMETHING worked, and all I did was hold F8 and meremly LOOK AT most of the options available. I changed one thing: I set it to show me more while it booted, and this time Windows started normally, although of course it had forgotten most of its customizations so at first I didn't think it had... I had saved my color scheme, and reset to it manually, but this box is a very strange color it didn't used to be. If that's the worse of this, fine. Thanks, all!