Put Safe Mode in the standard boot menu of Windows XP

When you encounter problems with Windows XP, you may need to boot the system in Safe Mode. However, choosing Safe Mode boot mode is not intuitive and is a user-friendly task.

Although you can choose it quite easily, you must pay attention and press F8 at the right time while the system is booting (usually most users will press F8 continuously from the time the machine starts to boot to Don't miss this sensitive moment). Then a menu will appear and you must select Safe Mode boot mode in this menu.

What do you think if we shorten these operations by putting Safe Mode boot into Windows XP's standard boot menu (Usually this menu only appears when you install 2 operating systems on one machine that allow you to select boot operating system)? It will certainly be convenient. You only need to do the following:

1. Open the System Properties dialog box (go to System in Control Panel or right-click My Computer and click Properties ).

1. On tad Advanced , click the Setting button in the Startup And Recovery area .

1. In the System Startup area, click the Edit button (open the Boot.ini file).

1. When the Boot.ini file opens in Notepad , find the line that ends with the / fastdetect switch.

1. Highlight and copy the line, then paste it down below.

1. Change WINDOWS = 'Microsoft Windows XP Professional' to WINDOWS = 'Safe Mode' .

1. Then add the command / safeboot: minimal / sos / bootlog at the end of this line.

After completing the file Boot.ini has 2 lines as follows:

multi (0) disk (0) rdisk (0) partition (2) WINDOWS = "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" / fastdetect

multi (0) disk (0) rdisk (0) partition (2) WINDOWS = "Safe Mode" / safeboot: minimal / sos / bootlog

On the next time you boot up, you will have two boot options, one for Windows XP and one for Safe Mode .


Note:

In addition to the steps to access the above Boot.ini file, you can access it faster by opening the My Computer window, then entering the C: Boot.ini path into the address bar and pressing Enter .

To remove the Safe Mode boot mode option in the boot menu, simply access the Boot.ini file again and black out the line containing WINDOWS = 'Safe Mode' and delete it. Then save the changes to the Boot.ini file.

If your computer installs multiple operating systems, you can also use this method to not select the operating system, or change the default time the system will make the choice for you.

For example, you install Windows XP and Windows 2000 on the same machine. To remove Windows 2000 , simply go to the Boot.ini file and delete the line containing WINDOWS = 'Windows 2000' .

To change how long the system selects the operating system to boot, you access the Boot.ini file, at the timeout line set the amount of time you want (in seconds, the default is 30 seconds). Then save the changes to the Boot.ini file.