What to do when Windows 2000 safe mode doesn't work?

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What to do when Windows 2000 safe mode doesn't work?

musicales

9:16 am on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

Does anyone have any suggestions - after I deleted some old programs, my laptop gets past the windows loading screen, shows the blue of the desktop with no icons, then reboots itself. The same even happens in safe mode, so I can find no way of getting in to sort things out. I'm away from home so I don't have my windows discs to reinstall - any suggestions - help safe a poor webmaster's life!

Visit Thailand

9:20 am on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

Had some problems similar to this recently although from time to time I could get into Windows. We later discovered it was a software conflict with a driver although we never quite worked out which one but believe it to be a conflict with the vido card driver and NIS 2003. We had to reinstall the drivers and reload the offending software.

2oddSox

12:55 pm on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

Can you see/have you tried 'Last known good configuration'?

2odd...

musicales

4:01 pm on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

I have thanks - no joy there either. I found something about booting using makeboot.exe but you need the disc to do that which, as I say, I don't have....

lorax

4:10 pm on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

Stick the Windows 2K CD in and boot from that then run a repair.

2oddSox

4:42 pm on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

How 'bout into VGA mode, just in case it's a video card/driver problem?

2odd...

musicales

6:20 pm on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

No joy there either! I tried every single option on the f8 screen. All rebooted at exactly the same place.

lorax

6:31 pm on Jul 29, 2003 (gmt 0)

Is the boot drive FAT32 or NTFS?

musicales

6:52 am on Jul 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

I think it's FAT32, but I'm not 100% sure I'm afraid

Sinner_G

7:12 am on Jul 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

Don't want to sound pessimistic, but I had the same problem a couple of weeks ago. Never found out what was wrong and had to format the HD and re-install everything.

Visit Thailand

7:33 am on Jul 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

Just remembered which driver it was - the Lan card driver. Compaq had somehow managed to put the wrong driver in which was causing a conflict.

Nothing would work with F8 etc we had to take it into to Compaq's (very, very busy) service centre.

Mike12345

1:01 pm on Jul 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

If you can get to a command prompt run chkdsk /f . I done this the other day when i had a similar problem. Could help, might not. Im sure its worth a go though!

lorax

3:33 pm on Jul 30, 2003 (gmt 0)

If it's Fat32 then you can boot up on a floppy disk and get into the system directory.

If it is a video driver problem - which is what it sounds like - and you know the driver for your video card then you can temporarily rename it so the system has no driver (I believe the driver files are .vxd). This should allow you to boot into safe mode at which point you should re-install the driver.

If safe mode still doesn't work, you should see if you can get a copy of the basic 640X480 driver used by safe-mode (a visit to MS Knowledge base and a bit of searching should yield you the driver file name). Acquire this driver file and copy it to the floppy disk and then to the video driver dir and try to boot into safe-mode again.

If you still can't get in - I'm about of ideas and I'd do a re-install.

Of course all of these require that you have a Win2K CD or disk set. If you don't - then I'm afraid you're in deep doo doo. :(