No Safe Mode

I had a minor problem (which I managed to solve anyway), and I decided to try booting into Safe Mode in order to fix things that way. However, when I followed the screen prompt and held down F8, instead of the expected selections, the only choice it gave me was to boot into Windows 2000. No Safe Mode, no "command prompt only ", just the normal operating mode. This makes me nervous - what if I really need to boot into Safe Mode? And why don't I have the expected list of options, and how do I get them back?

 

this thread wasn't for W2000/3 but if you can get to C:\> from a floppy the WIN /D:M, or the use of MSCONFIG's enable startup menu - might well be worth investigating (towards the end of the thread).
best wishes, HJ.

 

I don't have a floppy to boot from - can you even do that in Win2K? I also don't have msconfig. (I don't even have my Win2K install disk, or at least I can't remember where I put it.)

 

sorry acelightning my brain's full of thumbs tonight - forget the floppy anyway, the C:\> would have had to have been from a restart into ms-dos mode even with W9x - and you presumably don't have that option with W2000/3?
Is there really no successor to msconfig? The re-enabling of the startup menu rings true...
oops, HJ.

 

I don't know whether or not Win2K in general has the ability to boot to a C: prompt, although I would hope it does. But somehow, whether I selected something weird when I first installed Win2K, or tweaked something and now can't remember what it was, or however else it happened, I can't boot into anything but the main O/S itself - no Safe Mode, no Command Prompt, no choices at all.

I don't know whether there's an equivalent to msconfig for the NT family (which, of course, includes Win2K and XP). If there is, I'd like to know where to get it.

 

if you have/can TweakUI, that allows you to enable/disable the boot menu...

 

I do have TweakUI - where are the boot menu settings?

 

along the tabs, off to the right of the ones which show! ( "scroll" the tabs with little arrowhead) there's a tab for "boot "; on my version it's third from the RH end... I have a setting "always show boot menu. "
...which is a bit different from enabling F8; but one way of reading the other thread, it looks as though going through safe mode once may have restored the function of the F8 key?? not sure.
best wishes, HJ.

 

this looks good: same tab on tweakui, check out the option for "Function Keys Available "...
what I see

 

There's no such arrowhead, and no such tab, in my version of TweakUI. I do seem to recall that the Win9x versions of TweakUI had such a tab, but it's not there in the Win2K version I've got now.

The tabs I have are: Mouse, General, Explorer, IE, Cmd, Desktop, My Computer, Control Panel, Logon, New, Repair, Paranoia, and Open. None of them have anything relating to boot-up.

 

rats another good idea threaded-fastenered.

I did a bit of delving, assuming at first that an alteration to a registry entry was involved - only to find that the option to use F8 on bootup is actually controlled (for W98) by a line in MSDOS.SYS... err, umm, you don't have one of those, do you?

Most (?all) of the options on the "Boot" tab of tweakUI (W98) relate to MSDOS.SYS, not to registry entries... which explains the lack of that tab, but isn't very useful.

will post back later if I manage to find anything more helpful.

best wishes, HJ.

 

Ace - you have only 2 choices with 2K for boot up options (well - 3 choices but one is very limited and for emergency repairs when all else fails).

The closest 2K has to 'safe mode' startup is usually listed as VGA Mode where a limited set of drivers will load and you'll be shown loading details on screen. The 'command prompt only' option in 9X/ME systems simply starts the DOS base for the system and doesn't load Windows. 2K does not run as a shell over DOS so it's not there to use.

The Recovery Console (3rd option but needs to boot from CD usually) does give you a black screen with white path information and a blinking cursor so it looks like a normal DOS session. It is not. It loads the beginnings of 2K but as little as possible to still operate and you can do some work from there. Some of the commands from the old DOS days still work (dir, copy, del, and others) plus there are some new ones like fixboot, fixmbr, and a few others.

 

The problem is, Newt, that I don't see the other two choices when I boot up. The only option I have is to boot into my usual Win2K. There's another Win2K machine in this room, and it has those options on boot, so I know they're supposed to be available. I just don't know why they aren't there on my machine.

 

edited out as acelightning just sort of answered what I was trying to ask.

(glad to be handing over to someone who knows how the geblinking thing's meant to work)

phew, Hugh.

 

Oops...

I just tried rebooting again. At the beep, I pressed F8, and got a screen that said "select operating system ", but the only choice it gave me was Windows 2000 Professional. But at the bottom of the screen, it said "For troubleshooting and other options, press F8 ". So I pressed F8 again...

and got a whole list of choices. Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt, Enable VGA Mode, Debugging Mode, something about domain controllers, a few others (I should have written this all down). So it's all there, but I have to press F8 twice to see the list. Duh.

Thanks anyway. (Now maybe someone will have an answer to my other question).

 

Ace - if you'd rather have the various options presented when you boot up, you can easily make that happen. Just a matter of editing your boot.ini file.

Safe-Mode Boot Switches for Windows Boot.ini File

And while I'm not positive, I think startup items run from a Logon Script might allow you more control over what loads and in which order.