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“Have you tried Safe mode yet?” That's the infamous line you'll always hear from a family member, friend, and your friendly neighborhood technician.
The reason why everyone preaches about safe mode is because it actually does save your ass most of the time. When your computer won't start up properly; if it's infected by a virus; had a corrupted driver install; or one of the many other reasons your computer is having a problem - you want to go into safe mode.
To makes things easy to understand, safe mode is when you have access to basic files,drivers, mouse, monitor, keyboard, storage, base video, default system services, and no network connections.
I would consider it as one of the best method to troubleshoot an operating system. It has saved my ass several times and I am very thankful. =Þ
The purpose of safe mode is to put your system into a state where the bare minimum is required for an operating system to start. This will allow you to modify your system settings without receiving annoying error messages. A common scenario would be installing a new driver for one of your devices (video, sound card etc..) and the next thing you know after you reboot it prompts you with an error and you can't get back into Windows. This is when you want to go into safe mode and roll back to the old configuration and figure out what went wrong.
There are three different safe modes and the differences are:
- Safe Mode – Basic files and drivers, mouse, monitor, keyboard, storage, base video, default system services, and no network connections.
- Safe Mode with Networking - Basic files and drivers, mouse, monitor, keyboard, storage, base video, default system services, and WITH network connections allowing you to access the internet (good, if you need to look online to solve a problem).
- Safe Mode with Command Prompt – Is the same as regular safe mode but you don't have a graphical user interface (GUI).
There are a few ways you can put your computer into safe mode.
The first way is:
• Restart your computer
• Start tapping F8
• Select Safe Mode
And the screen below will appear.
Click to enlarge
The second method is not known by everyone or the most popular method. You can force the computer to go straight to safe mode after a restart.
- Click Start > Run .
- Type ‘msconfig'
The following window should appear
Click to enlarge
Now click on BOOT.INI tab
Click to enlarge
In the Boot Options you will notice /SAFEBOOT check it off and select one of the following:
- Minimal – Basic safe mode
- Minimal(Alternateshell) – Normal safe mode minus the graphic user interface
- Network – Regular safe mode with network connections
- DSRepair – Directory Services Repair
Once you have select one you may now restart your computer and will boot up in safe mode.
Recommendation
I personally love using Safe Mode with Network connections (unless you have a virus. Don't want it spreading through your network) because you can easily get access to files, drivers, and other necessary tools through the Internet/Network.
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