Task 10.1: Booting into Safe Mode

Have you ever replaced a device or installed new drivers, and after rebooting the system gotten nothing but a black screen, or even worse, the dreaded blue screen? Safe mode was designed to help you resolve just this type of problem.

Safe mode boots into the operating system while loading only the bare minimum of drivers—like the low-level VGA video driver—hoping to avoid initializing the bad driver that is causing the system to fail on reboot. While in Safe mode, you can (you hope!) figure out where the problem is coming from and find a resolution. Then you can reboot into Normal mode, which initializes all drivers configured.

Safe mode cannot be used to resolve all problems. Although it minimizes the number of drivers it loads, it must still load some drivers. For example, Safe mode must load drivers for mass storage devices, like controller cards, tape drives, and optical drives. These are loaded because these storage devices might be required to access disaster recovery media to help with the repair. If the cause of the failure involved one of these device drivers, Safe mode will also fail on bootup.

Further, while in Safe mode, since many drivers are not loaded, many devices are unavailable. You will have limited access to system resources, since many of their drivers were not initialized.

Scenario

You are an administrator in an Active Directory environment. After installing a new set of drivers for an existing device, a system that you are responsible for is blue-screening on reboot.

Scope of Task

Duration

This task should take 20 minutes.

Setup

You will reboot into Safe mode and initialize a driver update, as if there had been a system failure.

Caveat

Safe mode does not initialize all system devices. Safe mode does initialize all mass storage device drivers in case you need to perform a restore from one or more backup devices. Since there has been no actual device failure, do not complete any driver updates or other system changes.

Procedure

For this task, you will boot into Safe mode and implement a device driver update procedure, but you will not complete the update.

Since there is no actual driver failure, do not replace any drivers.

You will cancel out of the driver update process before making any system changes.

Equipment Used

For this task, you must have:

• Windows XP Professional system
• Administrator access

Details

1. Power up the system. Immediately after the BOIS screen clears, press the F8 function key repeatedly until you are presented with the Windows Advanced Options Menu.

If you see the color Windows startup screen with the progress bar sliding from left to right, you’ve missed the time slot for entering the Windows Advanced Options Menu. Reboot the system and try again.

2. Select Safe Mode from the Windows Advanced Options Menu.

3. Log on to the Windows XP Professional system as the Administrator.

4. You will be presented with a message identifying Safe Mode operation. Review the message and click Yes to proceed into Safe mode.

5. You will see a black desktop with Safe mode clearly labeled in the four corners of the desktop.

6. Right-click on My Computer and select Manage (or select Start ⇒ Programs ⇒ Administrative Tools ⇒ Computer Management). In the Computer Management console, select Device Manager.

7. In the right pane, expand Network Adapters. Click on the first adapter listed.

8. Right-click on the first adapter and select Update Driver.

9. This should start the Hardware Update Wizard. Select Install From A List Or Specific Location (Advanced), and click Next.

10. On the next screen, select “Don’t Search. I Will Choose The Driver To Install.” and then click Next.

11. On the next screen, click Have Disk as if you were going to restore from the earlier set of driver installation disks, or point to where the earlier drivers resided on the system.

12. In the Install From Disk dialog box, browse to the earlier driver files and proceed with the driver update procedure.

Since there is no actual driver failure, do not replace any drivers.

13. Click Cancel to close the Install From Disk dialog box.

14. Click Cancel to close the Hardware Update Wizard.

15. Shut down the XP Professional system.

Criteria for Completion

You have completed this task when you have booted into Safe mode and initialized a driver replacement procedure. You should not have completed the driver update, since there really was no driver failure.