Problem booting in safe mode

[Adolph]

I am a owner of dell inspiron 1501 laptop with windows xp installed on it.
now the problem am having is i can't get to boot into safe mode. I try restarting it an pressing the f8 key but nothing is hapenning.
Is there any other way that i can boot into safe mode or there is another key i can press........!

Can Anyone Help......???

[Calvin K]

There is an easy way. Go to Run and type "msconfig" without the quotes and press Enter. Now under the System configuration utility, go to the Boot tab and place a check on /SAFEBOOT.
Now restart your computer.
After your work is done, uncheck the box /SAFEBOOT from msconfig.

[Adolph]

See this the thing right there i caan't remeber my password to get into windows. So i wanted to boot into safe mode so i can take of the password......!

[Calvin K]

But you must have administrat or priveleges to do that. I din't understand what exactly you are trying to ask.

[Adolph]

Ok. I have my friends lap top an they forgot their password to login into windows from the welcome screen. I have been reading this article on how to get by it. it says that if i boot into safe mode an go to the administrator account and to user account i can take off the passworrd or reset it.

[Calvin K]

Yes, that is correct. But for that, YOU must be an administrator holding a valid password to the account.

[Calvin K]

What you can do is run a windows live cd(Windows PE), which is just an OS on a disk and then you can copy all the drive data on to an on the other drive and then re install windows or live cd's have tools on them to extract all the info from same (thats just the place windows stores passwords) and then you can crack the password but thats alot harder then just copy the data and reinstall....!

[jmew13]

That's true that you will need to authenticate when booting in safe mode, but chances are that if the computer is setup to use the welcome screen with users listed, that the administrator password is blank. Administrator is setup by default in XP with no password, and will only be accessible via safe boot (no doubt setup this way for the home user with this issue . . .) Have you already resolved this issue, or do you still need help booting into safemode?