Laptop wont boot to Safe Mode?

Draeger · 28 Jun 2009 at 16:24

Hi,

I have a friends Toshiba laptop here that has picked up a few nasty Trojans and viruses ( virii??!! ). Including that "Personal Anti Spyware" nonsense that pretends you have lots of security issues and asks you to cough up the cash to fix them.

Anyhow, I have dealt with the same malware before and thought I had nothing better to do that run a few scans with Super AntiSpyware ( which got rid of the same malware the last time I used it ) and also remove the outdated McAfee AV that is on the laptop and replace it with avast! and run a scan with that too. All in safe mode with System Restore turned off, of course.

However, the laptop steadfastly refuses to boot to Safe Mode. You tell it do do so but it just keeps booting up normally?. I also tried to run an avast! "boot time scan" at startup but all it does is goes through the motions and then displays the "Windows did not start properly" screen and gives me the usual boot options. If I choose to try and boot it to Safe Mode from there it just boots normally again.

Any ideas?. I'm going round in circles here because there's obviously no point in trying to scan in normal mode, really need to get it to boot to Safe Mode.

*EDIT* Forgot to say, its running XP Home.

theheyes · 28 Jun 2009 at 16:41

I believe when referring to a computer virus the plural is indeed "viruses".

It sounds like the system is completely borked, is format and reinstall an option?

Draeger · 28 Jun 2009 at 16:53

That would be my preferred option, yeah. Will need to check with the owner in case he needs data recovery of any sort carried out.

I tried starting it in Safe Mode via msconfig, ticking the /SAFEBOOT option under boot.ini but it just blue screened on me when it was about to boot to Safe Mode. I'm thinking this could be one of those "Yeah, I'll take a look at it and see if I can fix it" jobs that you wish you had never taken on.

theheyes · 28 Jun 2009 at 17:08

Yeah, when a system is riddled it can be frustrating to clean and hardly worth it in the end when a format will do a better job and often more quickly.

Lets just hope he has no important files on there otherwise it will keep you occupied for a few hours more.

Draeger · 28 Jun 2009 at 17:14

Ahh, it goes from bad to worse!!

Because I went in via msconfig and ticked the /SAFEBOOT option under the boot.ini settings, it's now constantly trying to boot up in Safe Mode with the resulting BSOD every single time. I want to reverse what I have ticked in msconfig but obviously cannot get the thing to boot to desktop now to change it back. Is there a way to change what I have done in msconfig?.

Because the way it is now, I cant even get it to boot to the desktop so I can backup any data on it!!.

Aaaarrgghh!!!!

Draeger · 28 Jun 2009 at 18:28

Phew!!. Sorted that little issue out. I used a MiniPE disk to boot the thing up and then removed the /SAFEBOOT switch from the boot.ini and then saved it. Now back to being able to boot back to the desktop, albeit I'm no further forward with cleansing the damn thing.

Box of matches and a can of petrol is looking like an attractive option. :rolleyes:

Lonewolf · 29 Jun 2009 at 00:52

Draeger said:
Phew!!. Sorted that little issue out. I used a MiniPE disk to boot the thing up and then removed the /SAFEBOOT switch from the boot.ini and then saved it. Now back to being able to boot back to the desktop, albeit I'm no further forward with cleansing the damn thing.

Box of matches and a can of petrol is looking like an attractive option.

Appears to be a very frustrating process. Good luck in finding a solution.