Cannot boot to safe mode

Question

I was doing a system restore on my laptop and forgot to plug the laptop in. Something happened while I was not watching and I did not have the power cord plugged in so it stopped because the battery went dead OR it went into hibernation.   Now, I cannot boot to regular Win XP Home and cannot boot to safe mode. I can get it to the boot option page which gives all the choices but if I chose safe mode or regular windows XP it goes to the logo splash screen and then continually reboots. I see the safe mode smaller blue screen for a millisecond and then it fails and trys to reboot into regular windows.   If I could just get into safe mode I could just run system restore and I think all would be well again. Any suggestions? I can boot to the bios and the laptop does not have a floppy drive.

kapalua · Answer

Thanks for the reply, no but I will. Assuming I can get to safe mode with command prompt what then? I really do not know command prompts.   Also, what if I cannot get to safe mode with command prompt?

kapalua · Answer

OK, I tried booting into safe mode with command prompt and it went to a screen showing all the files it was loading in a smallish window as it normally would before booting into safe mode, seemed to stop for approx. 20 seconds and then tried to reboot into regular windows. It failed of course after showing the splash screen for the computer and then entered another reboot cycle and keeps doing this.

mombodog · Answer

Have you tried safe mode with command prompt?

mombodog · Answer

Kapalua, if nothing else works you will have to do the following to get it to boot.

How to recover from a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting

Connect your non-bootable hard drive to the other computer.

Open Windows Explorer. Click on Tools|Folder Options|View. Check the box beside "Show hidden files and folders". Apply your change.

Navigate to the d:\System Volume Information folder ( d: represents the crashed drive letter).
You will see a folder named something like _restore{.........} the dots represent an alpha-numeric sequence.

In this folder you will see folders named RP0....RPnn. Find the one with the highest number.
These are your System Restore points. In the highest numbered folder you will see a folder named snapshot. In this folder are registry hive files which you need to recover your system:

_registry_user_.default
_registry_machine_security
_registry_machine_software
_registry_machine_system
_registry_machine_sam

Create a subdirectory; i.e, d:\Windows\TMP. Copy these files to the TMP subdirectory. Rename them:

default
security
software
system
sam

Note: Be sure to lose the period (.) in the file named _registry_user_.default
Delete the files in the d:\windows\system32\config subdirectory with the same names.
Copy the d:\windows\tmp files to the d:\windows\system32\config. subdirectory.
Put your drive back in its original system. Your system should start normally. If you get the same error go back and choose another folder ( RPnn-1) and repeat the procedure.

Message Edited by mombodog on 09-09-2007 11:55 AM

kapalua · Answer

I am not able to boot to that either.

Rebel9 · Answer

You may have to perform a 'Repair Installation' of XP. Have a look at this article for step by step instructions.

tomron · Answer

Maybe 'last known good config'   http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307852   Tom

mombodog · Answer

Your only other option is to try a Repair of XP as mentioned by another member, but if that fails then you have no other choice than to do as I suggested in my last post. Or reinstall XP clean.   http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm#RI  repair XP

tomron · Answer

Its a long shot but try booting in 'Enable VGA Mode' After hitting F8,try 'Enable VGA Mode'

kapalua · Answer

Thanks but the hard drive is in a laptop from which I'm unlikely to be able to remove it, let alone connect it to another machine. Is there another way?

Windows General

Cannot boot to safe mode

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