Safe Mode Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

How (and when) to boot your Android device into ‘Safe Mode’

Posted on June 19, 2022

If you’re a Windows or Mac user you probably know that restarting your computer in Safe Mode is a great way to troubleshoot software problems that are difficult to track down when everything but the kitchen sink is running on the machine.

In a nutshell, booting a device into Safe Mode ensures that only the most essential parts of the operating system and the most basic hardware drivers are loaded into memory to make it easier to track down those most stubborn issues.

Luckily, Android devices can be booted into Safe Mode as well. [Read more…]

How (and when) to boot Windows 10 and 11 into Safe Mode

Posted on May 16, 2022

If you’ve been a Windows user for any length of time you probably know that there are times when it helps to boot Windows into Safe Mode.

In a nutshell, booting into Safe Mode forces Windows to load just the most basic Windows files and hardware drivers.

This helps a great deal when trying to remove stubborn viruses, track down faulty hardware drivers and resolve a wide range of software issues.

[Read more…]

How (and why) to boot Windows into ‘Safe Mode’

Posted on March 5, 2022

If you use a Windows PC there will likely come a time when you need to start up Windows in Safe Mode for trouble-shooting purposes.

Which brings up a question you might be asking…

What is Safe Mode?

When you boot up Windows into Safe Mode only the bare essentials of the operating system are loaded.

Only the system’s basic hardware drivers are loaded, and no programs listed in the Startup folder are allowed to load and run.

In a nutshell, Safe Mode makes it much easier to troubleshoot and fix software problems such as bad drivers, corrupted Windows files, really viruses and a lot more.

How to boot Windows into Safe Mode [Read more…]

Enable the F8 key for booting Windows 10/11 into Safe Mode

Posted on December 21, 2021

In Windows 7 (and earlier versions) we could easily boot our computers into Safe Mode by repeatedly pressing the F8 key when Windows first started loading.

Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft disabled that option in order to help speed up the boot process. Personally, I have never been very fond of that change.

If you miss being able to press F8 to boot into Safe Mode on your Windows 10/11 machine, you can easily re-enable it with a simple command line entry. [Read more…]

How to initiate a System Restore when your PC won’t boot into Windows

Posted on August 27, 2021

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System Restore is a powerful tool for reversing detrimental changes to your PC’s Windows installation.

In a nutshell, System Restore allows you to “roll back” the Windows installation to the state it was in at a time before the detrimental changes were made.

For example, lets say that somehow a critical Windows setting gets changed and your system starts doing strange and unexpected things.

You can usually fix this type of issue by simply using System Restore to roll Windows back to a Restore Point that was created a few days earlier.

System Restore is typically launched from within Windows, but what if the issue at hand is so severe that your PC won’t boot up into Windows at all? [Read more…]