computer keeps starting in safemode (not by choice)

[thugpoet22]

I have a friend who's computer keeps either starting in safe mode or stops when the screen displays Windows 98. Im really not sure what the problem is, hopefully someone on here might have some ideas.

 

[ikayak]

I have this happen several times. I have found that deleting the smartdrv.exe from C:\windows and rebooting has resolved this issue several times. You do need to have the cabs on the computer so smartdrv.exe can rebuild itself.

 

[thugpoet22]

what are cabs ? I understand the rest, "cabs" is a little confusing though.

 

[CSCWheels]

Cabs are compressed files that contains the files that make up windows. When you install windows, these files are drawn from the cabs to be installed as the OS. In your instance the system will detect that smartdrive has been deleted and will start a proceedure to extract Smartdrive from the cabs for restoration on your system. What the others are saying is that in order to do this, the cabs have to be either on the HDD in a special directory that is set up by Windows installation or drop in the CD when prompted and point the wizard to the CD when it asks for it.

 

[jrbarnett]

I found this happenned when the hard drive got corrupted. My suggestion is to boot from a Win9x setup disk and run scandisk on all hard drive partitions.

John

 

[thugpoet22]

Thanks for all the help

 

[TonyBose]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324609

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306615

http://support.microsoft.com/search...Type=ANY&maxResults=150&Titles=false&numDays=

Humpty Dumpty was pushed!!

 

[rstybr]

heres one that happened to me, had one that kept going into safe mode no matter what i did. I played with it for better than an hour, then realized that there was a key stuck down on the keyboard, this was winME. once i cleaned the keyboard all was good.