booting in safe mode

[FrankSG]

My daughter called me and said that all of a sudden her computer started to boot in Safe Mode. She can't think of anything that she might have done to make it do that. But if she shuts it down, it will just boot up again in Safe Mode. Her OS is Win98.
~Frank~

[Budfred]

I am not aware of any malware that would do that... If she was doing something in msconfig and checked to boot in diagnostic mode, that would do it... msconfig would be the place to start looking....

[FrankSG]

msconfig would be the place to start looking....
That's a thought. Since you mentioned it, I looked in MSCONFIG and I see where you can set it to do that. I'll call her tomorrow and tell her to check that. Thanks...

[Sylvander]

It's possible that a [display (or other)] configuration change was made , and the normal display driver cannot work under the new settings.
So Windows automatically falls back upon a generic VGA (640x480x16-color) driver which makes Windows look as if it is working in safe mode, but it is not.
If it's not working in safe mode you will see the usual icons down in the system tray.

If she didn't make any hardware or software changes, she could restart to a command prompt and use [B]scanreg /restore to "jump back" to a configuration copy [automaticaly made by Windows at the 1st successful boot on a new day] made before the problem was introduced.
It only keeps 5 copies, so she needs to do this before too many days have passed.
The beauty of this is that she doesn't need to know what was done wrong.
Whatever it is will be undone.

If she has left it too long [and she cannot find the cause (and has no backup of the c: drive to restore)] she may need to re-run Windows setup to "repair" the Windows installation.

[FrankSG]

Sylvander--You were correct when you said it's possible that it only looks like it's in safe mode. When I called my daughter I asked her if she was sure that it was booting in safe mode. She said, "Yes, I know it is because all the graphics look fuzzy." I asked her if she could see all the usual icons. She said that she could but they didn't look right. I then read her your response. She got to a command prompt as you suggested and did a scandisk /restore. That took care of it. Thanks for the information. I should not have told her that I got the answer from someone else. That way she would have thought that her dad was real smart. :) Just kidding....

[Sylvander]

But her dad IS real smart. :D
After all, you did what it took to come up with a fix.

Isn't it super how something so seemingly simple eliminates the problem?
It's like you had a magic wand.
Say the magic words SCANREG /RESTORE and whoosh, the problem is gone.
And she doesn't even need to know what was the cause to produce a fix.

You should advise her to now set up a system of backup.
Have you read my saved spiel on the topic?