Windows XP Installation Stuck in Safe Mode

[Msvsdoj]

Hoping someone can help on this.  A friend of mine turned to me for answers and I can not provide any info.  He purchased a PC from Dell and was alerted by Norton that he had been struck by a backdoor trojan.  He went into 'safe mode' and removed the suspected file, but upon rebooting forgot to remove the /safeboot check from the 'msconfig' screen.  He didn't have the preset 'Admin' password that Dell had setup when they mass manu'd this PC, nor did they, apparently.

He called Dell's lovely Indian support staff and was told to reinstall Windows XP Home (how much support can a dollar buy these days?).  The setup makes it only so far into the installation before tossing out the error something to the effect of 'cannot continue installation in Safe Mode'.  Of course now he can't get into the guts of the damn thing to remove the SafeBoot notation.

Can anyone help with this?  As far as new users, it doesn't get much greener than my poor buddy.  I have no idea how to either A) Stop the Windows installation and back into the OS to http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'B)\' /> Get him out of Safe Mode.  He's looking at approx 20G of data he does not wish to lose.  His green color explains his lack of backup.  Either way he'd like to save the data if possible.

As the Dell PC came with only a 60G HD, I suggested he pick up a new drive while they're on sale, however, I don't know that this would even save him once he slaves a 1/2 installed OS drive onto a fully functional one.

Please help if you can....

[Fox5]

Can't you go into the bios, set the computer to boot from the cd, insert the xp cd, boot from it, and then select repair installation?(you'll have to change it back to booting from the harddrive at some point, maybe even the first time it reboots)

[Guest]

[quote name=\'Msvsdoj\' date=\'Oct 13 2003, 04:57 PM\']Hoping someone can help on this.  A friend of mine turned to me for answers and I can not provide any info.  He purchased a PC from Dell and was alerted by Norton that he had been struck by a backdoor trojan.  He went into 'safe mode' and removed the suspected file, but upon rebooting forgot to remove the /safeboot check from the 'msconfig' screen.  He didn't have the preset 'Admin' password that Dell had setup when they mass manu'd this PC, nor did they, apparently.

He called Dell's lovely Indian support staff and was told to reinstall Windows XP Home (how much support can a dollar buy these days?).  The setup makes it only so far into the installation before tossing out the error something to the effect of 'cannot continue installation in Safe Mode'.  Of course now he can't get into the guts of the damn thing to remove the SafeBoot notation.

Can anyone help with this?  As far as new users, it doesn't get much greener than my poor buddy.  I have no idea how to either A) Stop the Windows installation and back into the OS to http://images.thetechguide.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\'B)\' /> Get him out of Safe Mode.  He's looking at approx 20G of data he does not wish to lose.  His green color explains his lack of backup.  Either way he'd like to save the data if possible.

As the Dell PC came with only a 60G HD, I suggested he pick up a new drive while they're on sale, however, I don't know that this would even save him once he slaves a 1/2 installed OS drive onto a fully functional one.

Please help if you can....[/quote]
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[Moverman]

When in "Safe Mode" press ctr-alt-del", that brings up "Task Manager" click on "File", click "Run" type "msconfig" then change it back to "normal".
Worked for me anyways, hope this helps.

[Guest]

Fox 5 is correct.  While restarting you should get a screen where you hit F2 to go into BIOS setup.  Scroll to the boot configuration settings and hit F6 until CD-ROM is at top in the boot list.  Put in the installation CD, restart the machine and use repair installation.

[alaneeed]

aky ebn mas3od ma fhmt !!

[Lester]

I'm also stuck in safe mode while trying to reload XP.
msg.box says: "can't run setup in safe mode windows will restart"
This causes the OS to 'loop' back into setup and the same window box
CTL-ALT-DEL doesn't function at all so I can't get to Task Mgr to run MSCONFIG, and change mode to NORMAL.

Any suggestions ( pls don't say 'format' I've got 10GB of data on the disk.

[Guest_tom]

[quote name=\'alaneeed\' date=\'Mar 3 2004, 05:49 PM\']aky ebn mas3od ma fhmt !![/quote]
[censored]ing frog

[Guest]

Make the ecurrent HD a slave, then add a diff HD and boot into wutever OS wit the master HD. Transfer all data to master HD then get slave HD and reformat. Now make newly formatted HD master and the other slave and transfer it back. Tedious but works. I had to do it since winxp home only gives you 30 days to run in normal.
Or just scream and kick your computer while yelling F@%K windows and dells  POS confoming, money saving A$$ and just give up computers.
Then go smoke a blunt!