System restore and safe mode unavailable

[andygo]

I cannot get my system restore to work. I get a pop up that tells me to reboot and try again.

I have checked on the control panel/system screen and it appears to be monitoring as normal.

I also cannot boot into safe mode. I get the standard black screen after pressing f5 which asks me what level of XP I would like to boot into. (E.g. safe mode, safe mode with networking,last known good config. etc.)

It then starts to run through the safe mode boot up routine but then just stalls and reboots as normal into Windows.

Any ideas guys?

[Trooper2]

I've got a Hewlett Packard and my System Restore doesn't work at present either. There is an H.P. patch that you are supposed to install before putting SP2 on and I forgot last time I did a recovery. Maybe something similar?

Or perhaps some kind of virus or crapware?

Edited by Trooper2 on Wednesday 7th November 18:25

[andygo]

My pc is a fairly recent Philips box from PC World. (yeah, yeah, I know...) Just needed one in a hurry.

[Trooper2]

andygo said:

My pc is a fairly recent Philips box from PC World. (yeah, yeah, I know...) Just needed one in a hurry.

You might have a look around Philip's computer website, maybe it's a known issue. Other than that I would just start scanning for viruses, Etc.

• The alternate way to Safe Mode is Start> RUN> type msconfig into the box and click OK. Then select the BOOT.INI tab and check the SAFEBOOT box, then click Apply and OK. Then follow the prompt to reboot into Safe Mode. See if that works for you.

Edited by Trooper2 on Wednesday 7th November 18:54

[Z4monster]

What antivirus are you running? I had Norton AV and my system restore always failed. Digging deeper it appeared that the problem was a virus in the system restore file and i wouldn't allow it to go back. Once I scrapped NAV and went to AVG it found the virus in the restore file and deleted it. I had already turned off/on system restore but norton still wouldn't deal with the virus.

[andygo]

Running Avast and also run Ad aware and AVG

[andygo]

I selected BOOT.INI but this failed to boot into safe mode as on start up it restarts.

I am now a bit stuck as it won't boot into safe mode or into windows normally as BOOT.INI is selected. Any ideas how I can undo the BOOT.INI selection?

[Trooper2]

Try getting to the Windows Advanced Options Menu screen when trying to boot and select the "Last Known Good Configuration" option.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307852

I'm assuming you have another computer at your disposal at the moment.

[andygo]

I got my son to log onto PH as me. Anyway, have managed to find a philips hidden system recovery procedure which has installed a mirror of my hard drive leaving all my data files, preference intact. Very clever.

System restore and safe mode are still inaccesible though.

[andygo]

andygo said:

I selected BOOT.INI but this failed to boot into safe mode as on start up it restarts.

I am now a bit stuck as it won't boot into safe mode or into windows normally as BOOT.INI is selected. Any ideas how I can undo the BOOT.INI selection?

PC was in a nasty loop which wouldn't get into safe mode, but didn't give me any option to start normally as it was overidden by the mscnfig ticked safe mode option. Scary, particularly as the PC doesn't have any recovery cd's.

[Trooper2]

andygo, you don't happen to have Nero 6 installed on that machine?

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f48/nero-killed-safe-mode...

[andygo]

Thanks, but have just uninstalled Nero 7 and still same probs - no system restore and no safe mode access.

Edited to add: Found a small utility that repairs the registry so now I can boot into safe mode.

Unfortunately I stall can't get system restore to work. Been inot control panel and although it says it is monitoring my drives, I cannot elect NOT to monitor the drives. Also, I have typed in run/services.msc and can't see any evidence of SR running.

As I have a pc without XP discs, just the recovery software bundled onto a partition on the hard drive, I don't see how I can repair the missing/corrupted file. Googled loads, but no joy.

Edited by andygo on Friday 9th November 15:19

[andygo]

andygo said:

Thanks, but have just uninstalled Nero 7 and still same probs - no system restore and no safe mode access.

Edited to add: Found a small utility that repairs the registry so now I can boot into safe mode.

Unfortunately I stall can't get system restore to work. Been inot control panel and although it says it is monitoring my drives, I cannot elect NOT to monitor the drives. Also, I have typed in run/services.msc and can't see any evidence of SR running.

As I have a pc without XP discs, just the recovery software bundled onto a partition on the hard drive, I don't see how I can repair the missing/corrupted file. Googled loads, but no joy.

Edited by andygo on Friday 9th November 15:19

Bumped up to have another go at this problem.....