winxp always boots in safe mode with startup menu

[Alain Caillet]

Hi,
strange problem on a friend PC: After a failed program installation,
a) xp pro became very very slow to open My Computer/Explorer and
b) his PC would "always" boot with the startup menu before running ok in
normal mode

His NTFS drive C: is almost empty, well defragmented and checked and all
seems to be working fine excepted for the above.

I did the following:
1) uninstall the last program which failed to install (I had to reinstall
it again to get its entry visible Uninstall/ Change a program.
2) use Msconfig selective startup to find by elimination that "Windows
Image Aquisition (WIA)" was the culprit for a) above and deactivated it in
Services.msc

Now we are still plagued by b) windows always boots with start up menu
where we press "return" for a normal boot. In MSconfig , I checked
Boot.ini tab just in case /SAFEBOOT was selected. It was not !

Where else could I look to return this PC to a normal logon to Windows.
Shut Down always proceed normally with all windows steps.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

It's likely you are seeing some variation on 'restart on error'
Windows XP Restarts When You Try to Shut Down Your Computer (Q311806):
http://support.microsoft.com/suppor...y=stop&rnk=2&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=WINXP

If no help, try some of these fixes.
A shutdown troubleshooter http://aumha.org/a/shtdwnxp.htm

 

[Alain Caillet]

Thanks Mark,

may be English was not clear enough:

XP shuts down ok as it should. It's only the boot scenario that goes
wrong: it always boots to the safe mode option screen (the one that can be
triggered by pressing F8) then moves to the welcome screen at the end of
timing period or if normal windows mode (default) is selected, in pressing
return.

This is not an Msconfig setup problem. May be a boot.ini butI don't know
what it should look like on this plain XP pro setup with XP on drive C:
and a secondary drive reserved for Data.

Alain

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

If you suspect the boot.ini, you can rebuild a good copy from the Recovery
Console.

bootcfg /rebuild

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314058

--
Mark L. Ferguson
e-mail subject line must include "QZ" or it's deleted
..
Thanks Mark,

may be English was not clear enough:

XP shuts down ok as it should. It's only the boot scenario that goes
wrong: it always boots to the safe mode option screen (the one that can be
triggered by pressing F8) then moves to the welcome screen at the end of
timing period or if normal windows mode (default) is selected, in pressing
return.

This is not an Msconfig setup problem. May be a boot.ini butI don't know
what it should look like on this plain XP pro setup with XP on drive C:
and a secondary drive reserved for Data.

Alain

 

[Jake]

Alain, I too am having the same problem. Whenever I start my PC from a cold
start, it always starts in the safe mode. I have to either shut down or
restart in order to reboot in the normal mode. When I reboot or restart it
always starts in the normal mode. I would be appreciative if you would post
you fix, assuming you find one.

Regards,

Jake