Windows 10: Cannot get into safe mode

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to get into safe mode as a last resort for solving a 'boot to black screen' problem, but it's been impossible for 7 hours of attempts now. I can't login--I can't even get past the blinking cursor screen (it just goes black infinitely), so only things during the bootup sequence can be options.

What I tried (and did not work):

• Pressing F8 repeatedly. Only the BSS came up, not the "Advanced Startup Options" screen.
• Pressing F8 repeatedly after the prompt to get the BSS up (on the blinking cursor screen). This only got me a black screen as normal.
• Doing the above with the shift key.
• Using repair media (Win10 installation thing running from my USB, created from the Media Creation Tool)--there was no "Windows Startup Settings" option to select how I want to boot my computer.
• Running a command prompt from the repair media and executing bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy, then rebooting and pressing F8 repeatedly--still just the BSS screen
• Pressing F5 repeatedly instead. This brought me to a menu where there was a link to the Advanced Startup Options (it told me to press F8 to get there). This got my hopes up so bad--but when I pressed F8, it went into a black screen!!! I waited for a long time but nothing showed up.
• Pressing F12 repeatedly instead. This does the exact same thing as above.

So basically, I think I've exhausted all the available options. The only thing I couldn't try was choosing "Windows Startup Settings" in the repair media, because that option didn't exist. How can I make that option show up? Is there any other way I missed that could possibly get me into safe mode?

This isn't a new install so there are a lot of programs and settings I want to keep--I was one click away from resetting my computer before I decided to ask here. I really, really hope I won't have to reset.

Thanks for any help!

:)

 

Got PC into Win10 safe mode -Cannot get password accepted

Updated my wife's computer a couple of weeks ago. Have had some issues with it just locking up intermittently. Decided to try getting the machine into Safe mode to see if I could find anything wrong. Only problem was that Win10 Pro asked us to create
a pin number and we did. We have been using that to log in for a couple of weeks. Now when I get the machine (it boots right into Safe Mode) the old password we used seems incorrect. Can't enter the pin number and it will not recognize the old password.
Anyone know of any way I can recover the password or help me get out of Safe Mode? Devil of a problem. I do not want to redo the install.

Unfortunately I did not create a recovery disk immediately. Should have known better. :-(

 

Got PC into Win10 safe mode -Cannot get password accepted

Issue is solved.

 

Hold down the power key until the computer turns off when you see the Windows icon with the rotating circles. Repeat the 3 times (I think, maybe 5) and the computer will boot into safe mode automatically.

 

I can't get to the screen with the Windows icon. Just to be safe I tried this anyway (assuming that what comes up after the blinking cursor screen is said Windows icon), doing it 7 times when the fifth repeat did not read that it was booting into safe mode--however, it doesn't seem to be working.

 

You are booting to a black screen with a flashing cursor in upper left top corner ????

a black screen pretty much means you are not even getting to windows

Dowmload my rescue disk - boot from that media - so we all can see what is going on inside..

 

After the flashing cursor in the upper corner disappears, the screen becomes black.

If I'm not getting to windows then is there anything I can do without resetting it? I'm thinking it's a problem with the video card driver, which is why I'm trying to get into safe mode, but if it's not...

 

boot from the setup media and on first screen _ Press SHIFT+F10 to get a commed prompt

To GET the "F8" Boot Menu Option back in Windows 8/8.1, 10

You already did this one > From an elevated command prompt type> bcdedit /set bootmenupolicy legacy

From an elevated command prompt type> bcdedit /set displaybootmenu 1

never mind you already said F8 gets you back to a black scrrenn..

download my rescue disk - link in sig below

 

When I try this I get an error saying something like "this command couldn't be found".

Unfortunately I can't seem to get this working. I burnt the image onto a bootable disc but windows continues displaying a black screen after the blinking cursor part. Then I tried making it a bootable USB--same thing. Finally I tried replacing the boot.wim file in the repair media with your boot.wim file, but it gets stuck at the windows logo screen (usually this would take a while to get into the actual troubleshooting options screen, but I've been waiting for over an hour now with no change).

 

When you boot your PC you have to enter the Boot Menu Options (usually F12) to select the Media Device to Boot the PC from...

As you are constantly trying to boot into windows - not the media

 

I have gone into the bios to set it to automatically boot up from CD/USB by giving them the highest boot priorities. This has indeed automatically run the windows repair media off my USB several times without fail. To just be sure, I tried the both the CD and USB again with F12 pressed this time, and the same things happened.

 

so you are saying that you can not even boot into the normal setup media ??

your problem goes much deeper then....

As the media first boots and loads into memory...

Has nothing to do with disk then..

And since you can see bios screens and logo's then not video either..

remove memory, clean pins with alcohol swab and swap out and around memory sticks

 

I can boot into normal setup media, just not your Bootable PE Rescue Disk one.

Just to be safe I did this too, but to no avail. To list everything I did in regards to the black screen issue: Cleaned out my case (especially the video card), did a bios reset, ran chkdsk /f on all my drives, and did a memory test too with no errors reported.

Actually I'm really wondering about the whole being able to see the BIOs and logos thing--as mentioned in the first post, pressing F5 or F12 gets me to an intermediate screen which then tells me to press F8 for advanced startup options. That 'advanced startup options' screen should be the exact same thing as the rest of the screens (plain white courier text on black background), and yet, I can never see it. It seems like there are just certain screens that either don't load or don't display.

Edit: So I tried your PE Rescue Disk again (replacing Boot.wim on a normal Windows 10 installation image) and after an hour of waiting for something to happen, it actually worked this time! I see the desktop shown in the thread. Am going to try it out right now, thanks for this!

Edit2: It seems that my GPU isn't being recognized. The only video device reads "Video Controller (VGA Compatible)" and its driver comes up as "Microsoft basic display adapter". I tried downloading the latest version of the Nvidia driver for my card and installing that, but it keeps failing--when installing it through "update drivers", it says that I don't have enough space, even though I mostly definitely do (8.16 GB in my C Drive). There are also two unknown devices, and I could not update the driver to the Nvidia one on either of them. I also can't get internet to work--no devices available apparently. There are some services that can't be found, like msconfig and the network troubleshooter. Is this normal or is my OS in general actually broken?

 

Because you are booted into WinPE and you are trying to add the driver to WinPE......



Now that you have access to your current drive -
copy any files you need or want to save to another drive
then run the setup.exe to clean install the OS to your non working drive..

 

So it is just a reset in the end...

Is there any way to force booting into safe mode without access to msconfig in WinPE?