computer only starts in safe mode

My computer crashed/froze up while trying to print from a Word document, and it will now only open in safe mode. Also, my mouse will not work. I tried to restart and select Normal startup, but that DOS screen doesn't appear. Rather, it just automatically opens in safe mode. I am using Windows ME on a Dell w/ Pentium 4. I also have a firewall, Norton and Netgear wireless. Any suggestions, please??? I can't even figure out how to get online without my mouse! Thanks!

 

Interesting problem......heaven knows what has happened.

Still, lets have a stab at trying to remedy. As regards the mouse go to the Device Manager expand the mouse tab and delete the entry and reboot. You can get there by using the Tab and arrow keys start at Start. Upon reboot windows will reinstall that driver and hopefully it will work. BTW is this a USB mouse or P/S2.

The 'automatic' boot to safe mode and the inability to view the dos choice screen is curious. If you could have gained access to that you could have tried a 'step by step' boot. At this stage though, I would be tempted to unistall/reinstall the printer software as a first step.

The reason I asked about the mouse being USB, is that if it was (similarly to the printer) then one could question the intergrity of the southbridge driver as a cause, since the mouse and the printer are using it to communicate with the mobo. I am not sure if I am going widly off target but you see what I am getting to.

Is it possible for you to create a new partition on the HDD and attempt a fresh new installation of ME (while keeping your existing one).

Good Luck

 

If you can get into safe mode...try uninstalling the printer software and driver, and then reboot!! If that works then you know it was something to do with the printer software and/or driver!!

Are you virus free?? If your printer worked fine up until this point...you might have got a virus that was commanded to execute upon a certain command!! For example...the virus will sit in the system dormant until you execute a certain command (in your case, printing from a word document) and when you execute this certain command it will make the virus lash out!!

So i guess what i'm saying is...if you can scan for viruses in safe mode, then that certainly won't hurt anything, and who knows...maybe it will resolve your issue!!

Roger