Past tense. I wanted to know if it would start up in Safe mode at present.

I suggest you follow the instructions found in rvalkass's post and focus on helping your friend rather than flaming those willing to assist you.

Anyways, I just had a brain flash!

If you said it will boot into safe mode properly, then it may be that you have too much stuff executing/launching/running when your computer is starting up.

Boot into Safe Mode, go to Start > Run > "msconfig". Click Backup Files and then OK.

Now go to Diagnostic Startup and uncheck/untick everything except Config.sys and Autoexec.bat. Click Apply or OK and then restart the system.

Does it work now?

If it doesn't work, repeat the procedure except select Normal Startup. Now restart the system again. After it boots up, click Start > Shut Down > Restart. Hold the CTRL key after the POST (Power On Self Test). F5 brings you into safe mode, F6 brings you into Safe Mode with Networking. That means Internet access open.

I'll need to dig up some more info on that issue before posting more information. Only thing found was F6 is "Safe Mode with Networking".

Just tried msconfig... we'll see the results.

But, I've found something while doing a memory check (running mem in the command prompt): My friend's computer has no extended memory! Could this be a problem?

And yes, I can still use safe mode.

Edit: msconfig didn't help...

This post has been edited by NDPA: Sep 20 2006, 07:16 PM

I went on a suspicion, and found it to be right. Windows was claiming that there wasn't enough memory, but the actual problem was that too much was being used! My friend had messed around with the computer settings and accidentially set the Paging File size to be bigger than the computer's size itself!

I've fixed the problem now, so this topic can be closed. But thanks for all your help. And sorry I flamed you, jlhaslip. I didn't mean to cause any problems.