PC when started stays at the Safe Mode screen

Hi, when i turned on my PC on Friday pm, after shut down on Thursday pm (as normal), it will only go to a black screen Safe Mode screen, and which ever way i choose, Safe Mode, + networking etc or from last known state that worked, it keeps coming back to safe mode, please could you help.

Hi David,

Which operating system you are Vista or Xp?

Did you installed any new hardware or software recently.

Please provide us more information so that we can help you to resolve this issue.

Hi Seth,
My system is XP and i haven't put on or taken off anything over the last few months?

If you choose Safe Mode, the computer starts to do stuff but then you briefly see a blue screen with some writing on it after which the computer starts up again and you arrive back at the choices screen then you are stuck in a "reboot loop". If the "Last known good configuration" option does not work then you are in trouble!

There is a procedure you can follow to restore an old copy of the Registry saved by System Restore which generally works in such cases. This is pretty technical and I would advise you to seek Professional help rather than attempt it yourself. If you do want to try it yourself, post back and I will supply a link to the procedure.

Is teh F8 key stuck ? Just try pulling the key up and maybe, just maybe that is what is causing the issue, but try the other suggestion too.

"it will only go to a black screen Safe Mode screen, "

So its getting into windows, but the explorer.exe windows shell is not loading
Either explorer.exe is corrupt or there's been an attempt at hijacking the windows shell (possibly stopped by the AV software)

When it gets to that black screen it should be possible to hit control-alt-del, get the Task manager up, and then go to "start new process" and run explorer.exe
Once that is running, try doing a normal system restore back to before it went wrong. Following which update any antivirus software and do a FULL scan
If that does not work its time for manually restoring the registry and manually replacing explorer.exe and userinit.exe
I suggest you call in help if it gets to that

I guess you could also boot to "safe modem command prompt" and launch system restore through manually typing rstrui at the command prompt

David, you are getting a variety of advice because you have not explained the symptoms very clearly and different Professionals are interpreting what you said differently. You get the menu screen (white letters on a black background) that you would normally get by pressing the F8 key as the computer starts. Can you explain in more detail what happens when you select one of the options from the menu.

I'm interpreting what he said as being the black screen with "safe mode" in each corner
By then windows has loaded, but the interface shell has not

and a correction "safe modem" should have read "safe mode"...

Hi, sorry, i will try and explain better,
when i initialise the computer, it stops at the black screen (white writing) with 5 options, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt, last known configuration & start windows normally.
Safe mode - many lines of writing briefly, then tries to initialise but returns to the same screen.
Safe mode with networking - same as above.
Safe mode with command prompt - same as above
Last knon good configuration - no writing, but tries to initialise, very brief view of a blue screen with white writing, then back to the same screen as before.
Start windows normally - same again.
i hope this helps.

This seems to confirm that my supposition was correct, you are stuck in a "Reboot Loop". If this is a software problem rather than a hardware problem (as is most likely) then the procedure given here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us may well get you out of trouble. I would recommend you get a Professional to do this for you but you can try it yourself if you want.

Once you get your computer working again you need to consider what caused it to go wrong. It could have been a one-off glitch, or your hard drive may be failing, or you may have a computer virus etc.

David, One thing you could try.

Restart the PC, after the initial screen, but before Windows tries to start, press F8. You should get a menu with several options, including Safe mode etc. Towards the bottom is "Disable Automatic Restart". Select that one. It will probably still go through to the blue screen, but that screen will stay there and you will be able to read the diagnostics. There will be an Error code in the format 0xnnnnnnnn and probably a text reason. Post those back here and we should be able to give you a better idea of where the problem is and whether you can fix it yourself, or you need to call in a professional.