Stuck on Start

Q:I had an interesting thing happen on my computer at school. I had been gone a few days, when I returned and went to boot up my computer it would go directly to an option menu. Choose 1 for normal 2, 3, 4 etc for different ways of booting. I would choose 1. Sometimes it would go a little further like it was trying to boot and then would freeze up. Other times it wouldn't even go past that screen no matter what I do. I am using Windows XP Professional. It automatically comes up to the start up menu. One of the options it gave was to start from safe mode, disc, normal start up, and a couple of other
ones as well. Kind of weird huh. Any suggestions?
Clay R.
A: I agree with you that this problem does seem a little weird or puzzling. I say this because if I understand you correctly, it sounds as though your computer is booting up to the safe mode option window. The safe mode window offers the option to boot your computer in several modes that you have described. Pressing a function key while your system is booting up normally activates the safe mode window. Generally, this key is F8. The safe mode window normally starts at boot up when something in the operating system, normally a driver, is not loading properly. Safe mode would then allow you to start your computer on the bare minimum of resources. It operates in black and white instead of color for this reason. Once in safe mode you then can identify and disable the driver that is the source of the complications.
The concern for me is that you indicate that the computer is not allowing you to start up in safe mode. This would lead me to think that there may be a problem with the hardware. One thing that I have learned is that if you are having problems, start from the bottom up. By this I mean, check your hardware before you start monkeying with the software. This could be a simple fix or something more serious. Lets hope for something minor. From the hardware side of things I would start by replacing the keyboard. It is not unheard of that a keyboard is the source of similar problems. A key could be stuck or the keyboard could be damaged. The next thing would be to look at the drivers in safe mode. I am not convinced that the problem is on the software side because you would have received an error message that told you that there was a problem with a particular drive. Nevertheless, it would still be worth a look if the hardware actions do not resolve your problem. You would be surprised by how many times the most tragic of computer events are the result of hardware or operator headspace. 99% of problems originate from between the chair and the keyboard.