Cannot get system to go into safe mode. I press F8 on restart, get menu, select safe, and press enter. Get a string of data down the screen like it may be doing something, then menu comes back. The only way out to to select boot normally. I also tried going into msconfig, boot.ini panel, and checking safeboot. This was a problem as it keeps trying to boot into safe mode but cannot, so system would never boot up. Fortunately, I use drive image 7 back up so I restored the c drive image to get out of the problem. Does anyone have any ideas as to why system does not want to boot into safe mode? I cannot find anything on this problem.

> ... get a string of data down the screen like it may be doing something, then menu comes back. do you mean it goes directly back to the boot menu options, or does it re-start while it's trying to boot up and THEN goes back to the boot menu options? If it's the latter then it could be either a hardware/software(driver) issue. I would try booting to an XP boot cd and going through some of your recovery console options, and then look into possible hardware issues.

Yes, after the string of data, it goes back to the boot menu options. As long as I select safe mode it keeps doing this. I have to select boot normally in order to break the cycle.

I found my problem. I am running the Nero package. there is a bug in the InCD program that causes you not to be able to boot into the safe mode. The latest update at Nero solves the problem.