Accessing Windows in Safe Mode

GarethDW

GarethDW

GarethDW

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Joined
22 Jun 2006
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Had a problem with my Windows box earlier today whereby it kept on blue-screening... seems my AV was playing up and I needed to disable its service via safe mode so I could then boot normally on actually fix the problem. Only problem was that I realised I don't know how to access Windows Safe Mode apart from pressing F8 which, of course, doesn't work when you use grub ;)

In the end, because I was rushed for time and needed to do something from within Windows pdq, I resorted to blatting my MBR via the installation CD just so that I could use the F8 method, but I figured there must be a way of being able to access the Windows Safe Mode even if you're not using their boot loader. Does anyone know a way of doing this?
 
Hmm as far as i know it isn't possible, as grub has no prior knowledge of how the windows kernel works, but you could have booted windows, then hit the reset button, next time you selected the windows option on grub you should get the screen saying it didn't shutdown properly or whatever and be able to boot windows normally or safemode etc

Maybe theres a hack for grub somewhere though
 
Good idea about the resetting option... hadn't thought of that. Although thinking about it, I didn't get the option after getting the BSoDs either - not sure if Windows only shows it if it fails to boot correctly as opposed to after having blue screened.

Wasn't sure if I could add a parameter to the boot options in grub for Windows... I know this would work for Linux but not sure if Windows accepts different parameters during boot up or not.

It's not a biggie... hopefully I won't need to do it again. It was just something that I'd never thought of until today when I needed to get into safe mode.
 
Tsk, silly Windows. It would make sense, imo, to have that option after a Blue Screen as well... but maybe that's just cause it would've saved me some time earlier today ;)
 
I don't really know, but I'll speculate on how it works. When you boot up it writes to a log. When that process is complete it will indicate a successful boot in the log. When you boot it reads that log and checks to see if the last boot was successful. If not it gives you the safe mode option. When you get a BSOD after it's indicated success and it goes back to look at the long all looks hunky-dory despite your knowledge otherwise.
 
NTDLR (NT bootloader is chainloaded from grub) so you should have been able to f8 into safe mode after selecting windows as far as I know.

GarethDW said:
Tsk, silly Windows. It would make sense, imo, to have that option after a Blue Screen as well... but maybe that's just cause it would've saved me some time earlier today ;)
Click to expand...

Im not sure its possible, because at that point the kernel has panic'd and the only way you can interact with it is via remote debugging (though possibility the kernel exception handling could write to the file sys).
 
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