safe mode boot

[supersam]

hey guys whats up.....my friend just bought a used computer that had windows xp home edition. he didnt want home edition, so he went to the store and bought himself the professsional edition. during the 3rd step, which is belive is installing the devices....it stopped at the 50% mark. so we took the disk out and cleaned hoping that would solve our problems but nope. it didnt work...everytime i restart the computer it immediately starts off where it left which is installing the devices after the boot sequence. it starts reading the reading the cd rom data and after it hangs at 50% for like a very very very long time and plus the disc stops spinning like it cant read the file or something or some crap. so i was wondering how do i go into safe mode cause i want to go back before this even happened and do a system restore check and forgot this ever happened....lol any help is appreciated

[d_unbeliever]

during the installation of windows xp wherein you choosed which drive to install the new windows xp pro, did you format the drive or leave it as it is? if you formated it then you can't restore it ...

if you already formated the drive, then format it again then try reinstalling from the beginning...give a long time for the hardware detection...

is your installation cds are original, new and don't have scratch?

try to clean your cd rom drive, or use new one....

[supersam]

i didnt even know which drive is being formatted to windows xp pro. cause he had one drive but it looked to me as if it was partioned or somthing. cause he had two hdd icons in in the my computer screen. i think one was for in case something bad happnes the computer falls back on that section of the disk and boots up normally. and the other portion was for normal pc usage. i dont know what portion i tried to upgrade from. cuase i just popped in the cd drom when the pc was just on running. and it said do u want to install windows xp and i choose eyes and what not..and then i chose upgrade(recommended) and after that it started with the updating process. and now after it boots up it goes windows xp installaion has been restarted and it starts off kinda of where it left off which is at the 3rd stage(installing device). so i wanna just put in safe mode and after that i can just do a system restore.

[d_unbeliever]

press F8 on your keyboard (you can just press and press ) after the bios/cmos screen just before the windows xp logo appear until the Advanced Options Menu appear...then choose Safe Mode...then choose Windows XP (your previous installed version).

hope your successful in restoring

[supersam]

im sorrry but his bios screen looks different than mine..on mine it real easy to navigate through.so where would i find the safe mode option ?

[d_unbeliever]

don't enter the bios,did you press the DEL instead of F8?

press F8 after the bios screen(after the Hard disk detections)...you will go to the Advanced Options Menu which is NOT a part of the bios setup but part of the booting process.

or check this link
http://home.earthlink.net/~lreynol929/ruXP/Startup/ADVOPT.HTM

ask anything...we are here to help if we can help.

[handyguy]

Chances are you put it on the recovery partition which doesn't have enough room for it, so you only get to 50% ?

Pro only has about 50k more code than Home does. Home has drivers for all sorts of home based things, Pro has office based things.

[supersam]

i guess im pressing F8 at the wrong time cause everytime i do it goes to the bios screeen and i wanted to go to the advance options to go into safe mode. i will try again and hopefully i can push it at the right time just right after the bios.

[supersam]

hey guys my friend was soo mad that he even bought a new hdd yesterday and installed it correctly with the correct jumpers and everything...and the pc wouldnt let him install windows xp pro on that drive at all. after the bios ..it jumped to a black screen saying ....damn i forgot what was the name of file....is missing. so i was wondering if i can put in his new hdd in my pc and reformat it and install windows xp and then take it out put it in my friends computer? or do u think it wont work sense it will have the bios from my pc?