How to start networking services in safe mode?

vwdubber · #1 05-26-2005, 08:20 AM

Hi all!

I am trying to fix friend's computer - he basically uninstalled from add/remove programs those Windows Hotfix (SP2) Q999999 files (a few of them) and then restarted his comp ... and now windows boots up and right before the login screen it dumps a quick blue screen (ive tried like 20 times to get at least 1 sentence off of it but it flashes too quick to read anything at all) and then reboots itself. Ive tried the safe mode, last known configuration ... everything from that list - only thing that would work is safe mode with command prompt and from that I launched explorer.exe and it goes to safe mode. Now if I can start the net on that safe mode I might be able to use windows update and let it fix itself but I cant find out how.
Any ideas on how to do that or any other suggestions on how to fix that problem??? When I got to that safe mode I tried to restore the computer to a previous point but that did not help....
Thank you!!!

ckempston · #2 05-26-2005, 08:36 AM

There is probably a good reason you can only start up in Safe Mode with Command Prompt, which means you won't be able to start the network manually either. If he has all his software media, I'd try to repair XP, get all the data off the hard drive and then re-build from scratch. If you try to patch the OS together, it's probably not going to work too well from this point forward. Fresh install (after backing up data) is your best bet, if you ask me.

I've not tried this before, but you may be able to run "sfc /scannow" from Safe Mode Command Prompt. SFC /scannnow basically fixes changed system files. I am not confident this will work even if you can run it from Safe Mode, though - it sounds like the OS is royally screwed up.

vwdubber · #3 05-26-2005, 08:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ckempston

- it sounds like the OS is royally screwed up.

Thats a good way to put it

... but what can u do ...I will try the repair option from the windows cd and if that doesnt work ... start from scratch I guess.

Thanks for the input!

vwdubber · #4 05-26-2005, 10:40 AM

Well problem fixed ... that repair option on the windows cd does wonders. Everything is back up .. when it first rebooted it started popping up messages that the system has recovered from a serious internal error (no doubt

) and then it shows it was caused by the video adapter and advises to set the hardware acceleration to none. Hardware accelaration was indeed set to max so I followed the instruction but I am not sure if something like that would cause windows to crash so seriously...
Is it going to slow the system a lot if hardware acceleration is set to none???

ckempston · #5 05-26-2005, 10:50 AM

I wouldn't set it to none. I would just back it off a couple settings to 3 or 4 and see what happens. I recommend creating an rdisk or a restore point before doing this.

Basically, the less acceleration your graphics card is doing, the more processing your CPU has to do. If you're not using really intensive graphics software, though, I don't see what the need is for full acceleration. I'd just increase it a couple levels and see how the CPU utilization changes.