No safe mode options with F8 on dual os dell system

tsmith wrote:
I have Dell computer which i purchased from Dell with XP and Vista
installed. It is currently set to XP.

It is working fine. I am, however, trying to run a utility for AVG on
it in Safe Mode and have found out that I am having a difficult time
arriving to the Safe Mode options.

Interestingly and, most frustrating, I have found out that Dell won't
support a Dual OS system even though they are the folks who sold it to
me that way brand new! The computer is only 5 months or so old.

I try hitting the F8 immediately upon start up and I arrive at the
"choose OS" menu/page. The instructions in the Help feature on XP says
to then hit F8 again to arrive at the Safe Mode Options. Unfortunately
that does not work and the only way out is to escape and then the
computer proceeds to load up XP.

Any suggestions? It is not an emergency now but I sure would like to
know how to start up in Safe Mode.




One way to enter safe mode is to add an entry to XP's boot.ini file thus:


multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(5)\WINDOWS="XP Safe Mode"
/safeboot:minimal /sos /bootlog


Substitute the 'rdisk' number and 'partition' number for the targeted XP
install that you want to safe boot.

-or-

Actually the easy way is to copy the XP entry that will already exist in
boot.ini and paste in the copied line as the last entry. Edit the copied
line after the quoted text as shown above. Change the quoted text itself
to something recognizable as its content is intended as a man-readable
boot entry and has no effect on what actually gets booted.

You must have administrator rights to edit boot.ini. I advise saving the
original boot.ini file somewhere that is accessible to Vista just in
case the above fails.

John