Stuck at black safe mode screen

[Guest]

I used mscofig to open safe mode. I had a suspected virus I was trying to get
rid of, so I disabled system restore. When I rebooted, it went all the way to
login, but after giving Administrator password, it went back to the black
screen with safe mode in the four corners. Won't go past there. Reboot ends
up back at safe mode. F8 gets me back to choices, but even "Open normally"
ends back at black screen. Not particularly savvy at computers: evidently I
know enough to get me in trouble. Right now I"m on laptop. Troubled desktop
has Norton Security Suite, if that helps. Hope someone has a clue. Hate to
start all over: has my financial stuff and lots of files I don't want to lose
(should back-up more).

 

[Ronaldo]

When you get to the blackscreen in Safe Mode, press ctrl+alt+del, once or
twice or even more times if necessary to make the Logon Screen appear.. If
the Safe mode option doesn't work, try the "Last Known Good Configuration"
from the Safe Mode logon options...

Lets hope you don't need this information but just in case you do: If you
can't logon in any available option, you can rescue your important files
with a "Repair Installation" of Windows XP or through another computer
installing your HD as slave in the other computer.. that way you can access
your files through My Computer... you probably have to take ownership of the
slave drive from the host system before you can copy or cut and burn your
files to a CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW.

How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

 

[Guest]

Before I got your message, the same thing I tried 30 times suddenly worked.
But, I seem to have virus issues that Norton didn't catch that may have come
into play. Bottom line is "don't change boot.ini in msconfig to get to safe
mode". F8 works and gets you back out again. Also, don't shut off system
restore until you are in safe mode and are getting ready to delete a suspect
file. Live and learn. Thanks for the help. Now, on to system recovery. An
even bigger pain, but not as much as losing everything.