Safe mode not booting.

[spiritualsalad]

Hi All,

This is my first post on the forum so Hello Everyone!

So here is my problem, will start with a little history.

My OS was affected with a virus called Antivirus Soft. I got spybot to get rid of the registry entries but was not able to remove an exe file in the startup. So I decided to start in safe mode and get rid of it in msconfig.

Now I did the following which I shouldnt have LOL. In msconfig, I selected safeboot (instead of just pressing F8) so now Windows tries to boot in safe mode every time even when I select boot normally. And now safe mode will not load. I get a black screen which says safe mode on the 4 corners of the screen and then nothing.

So I put in the XP recovery CD and selected repair. The intial setup process started and it was time to restart to complete the process. So hit restart and then Windows goes into safe mode again and I get a message "Windows XP Setup cannot run under Safemode. Setup will restart now." Now every time I restart it tries to boot in safe mode and get the same message over and over again.

How do I get my machine to load normally without going to safe mode at this stage?!! CTRL ALT DEL does not work in Safe mode either! And I cant get the OS to load. What are my options? Please help !

Thanks,

Suhas

[cluberti]

I think short of booting to a WinPE CD and backing up your files and reinstalling, you pretty much have no more options.

[jaclaz]

Can't you try a Shift+F10 and running again msconfig?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/242380/en-us

jaclaz

[spiritualsalad]

Hi All,

Got this sorted out finally:

Changed the boot sequence to start from the CD again.

Went into the recovery console, hit enter when prompted for the password.

Executed bootcfg /REBUILD (case sensitive)

Removed the safe boot option and restarted and it worked ! I was able to start normally.

Thanks all for your suggestions

Cheers

Suhas