Home will not boot to safe mode, command prompt, and will not run chkdsk

[J]

Wednesday Eve

A client's Dell Laptop with XP home.

It boots to normal mode fine. All seems to work correctly.

I schedule a disk check and scan at reboot. And then reboot. No disk check.

I attempt to get to safe mode: the computer freezes just after displaying
the agp440.sys line.

This also happens when attempting to load to safe mode; command prompt.

I have run system file checker.
And applied SP1 again.
And installed all critical updates.

The computer had some spyware a few months ago and someone, not me, fixed
it.

I did use spybot, ad-aware, bazooka, hijackthis,... all appears fine now.

But no safe mode, and no disk checking.

Any thoughts?

J

 

[dude]

have you try going to the following >>> start >>> run >>>
type in the run command >> msconfig >>> click BOOT.INI
Tab >>> put a check mark on SAFEBOOT ... then reboot , it
should bring you into safemode

 

[J]

Thank you for your response.

I press the F8 key to display the boot menu.

The computer attempts to boot to safe mode, but does not get there.

FYI: I read of someone who did as you suggest and now they cannot get to
normal mode because they cannot un-check the setting.

J

 

[J]

Any body have some experience with this?