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mummer1

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Getting out of Safe Mode

I inherited a mess, and I've run into a wall trying to resolve it. Hopefully y'all can help me out.

It's a home made tower running XP Pro. It started with a P-4 and 2GB of RAM. The owner decided to upgrade to an AMD Phenom, new MB & 4GB of RAM. Getting Windows to accept its new hardware is the basis of the problem.

Here's what happened: I was able to get all of the appropriate drivers installed, but was still getting a 0x7e stop error so I decided to perform a repair install of Windows. At about that time, the Windows activation notice changed to a demand that I boot to 'normal' Windows and activate right now and it wouldn't allow further access to Windows until I did. Well, I had 'safe Mode with networking' set in the boot tab in the system configuration utility and was unable to change that setting when the activation app shut me out of Windows. Now, the repair install is half completed and the PC keeps booting into Safe mode then telling me that setup can't continue and it's rebooting. I edited the boot.ini to remove the safeboot notation, but there must be something in the registry that needs to be changed, too.

What I need is direction on what key(s) need to be changed and a reminder on how to edit the registry using another PC's copy of regedit.

I have to run an errand, but will be back in time for tip-off. I'll reply to any posts then.
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CompProbSolv
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What happens if you hit F8 just after the BIOS screen?  Can't you select the standard boot there?
Can't you select the phone version of Activate and do it over the phone?
Well you could probably load the hive into your registry then unload it after the changes are made... Must be some unreplaceable software to go through all that trouble.
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edbedb
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mummer1

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@CompProbSolv - I did that, and it still went to Safe Mode.
@JohnDecker - Activate isn't a problem now that I'm in the middle of a repair install. It will become an issue later, when the install is completed. When the activation app's popup locked me out, it informed me that I could only run activate in normal mode. If I'd have phoned them, I still couldn't have activated because I couldn't get into normal mode.
@BCipollone - That's my intention. Do you know which keys/values I need to change to stop booting to Safe Mode?
@edbedb - Is that where I can turn off Safe Mode? That looks like the solution to the original problem had I not decided to perform the repair install. I wish I'd had found that info yesterday. Now, I need to find out what keys/values I need to change to stop booting to Safe Mode. You did find the intelppm info that will help with the next Intel to AMD switcheroo later this weekend. Thanks.
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@edbedb - After re-reading my original post, I realize I wasn't clear about which keys (the intelppm or safe mode issues) I was referring to. Sorry 'bout that; I'll try to be clearer in the future.

Anyway, like I said, you DID find the intelppm solution which will hopefully help with the next conversion which I'm getting ready to start. Thanks, again.
Once you change that value the system should start in normal mode.
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I loaded the hive and went to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\aaaa\ and there was no ControlSet001. There were ControlSet002, ControlSet003 and ControlSet004. CS2 didn't have an intelppm key under services. However, both 3 & 4 had them and I changed both start values to 4. When I boot the PC, it went to a BSOD with a 0x7e error.

However, the owner called me to tell me that he bought an update to Win 7. So, this is over.

Thank you to all. edbedb gets the points on the strength of his intelppm fix that will hopefully pave the way for the next intel to AMD transfer which I'll perform tomorrow.