Trick to speed up finding which key goes to the BIOS (can use boot.ini
or OS's boot loader)

A problem with new comps is finding the BIOS key.. USually DEL or F1
or F2 but if it's a funny comp it may be frustrating when it keeps
booting the OS e.g. Windows..

I ran into this with a laptop running windows. But it shutdown while
in windows when the battery went. When I started it back up it said

""We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start
successfully
... restarted unexpectedly .."

and it offered "Safe Mode" and a timeout.

That was very useful 'cos it meant that each time I tried to get to the
BIOS, hit a wrong key and it tried to boot windows, it only got as far
as that screen, and I could do CTRL+ALT+DELETE

Rather than shutting down windows to get the message, another probably
safer say is to amend boot.ini so it appears.. There may be a better
way but I duplicated the first line withthe path to windows.. When
there is more than one option, the menu appears.

I don't know if there's a more elegant way of getting windows to not
load? something that can be set and unset quickly when you want it. But
this is pretty good

jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
<snip>
for the sake of googling, i'll add that another famous option that
identifies that screen was "Start windows normally"

<jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk> wrote
Put in a floppy; if the floppy loads, you didn't find the right key.

If you don't have a floppy, put in a bootable CD (memtest86 if you're too
lazy to conjure up one yourself).

Jon

<jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1167860104.255020.172530@q40g2000cwq.googlegr oups.com...
- Put a blank floppy in the A: drive.

- Just hold a bunch of keys down and generate a keyboard error

- Reset the BIOS with the mainboard jumper

- Read the users manual

Jon Danniken wrote:
your method only works if the BIOS is set to try to boot off floppy or
CD or both, before HDD.

<jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:1167860104.255020.172530@q40g2000cwq.googlegr oups.com...

"jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk" wrote:
I use W98. On that you can control all that with autoexec.bat.
The critical lines:

.... much elided ...
rem check some system files
validate /cf <validate.lst

rem Record boot time
set Bootime=%_date %_time
echo Booted at %Bootime% >>c:\logs\bootime.txt

@choice /t:n,5 Boot SoftICE?
@if errorlevel 2 goto winboot
rem SoftIce
@echo SOFTICE will boot windows
@choice /c:d /n /t:d,3 PAUSE
%softice%\WINICE.EXE

:winboot
@choice /t:y,10 Boot Windows?
@if errorlevel 2 goto end

win
mode co80

:end

This is combined with the following in \msdos.sys:

[Options]
BootMulti=0
; BootGUI=1 to auto start windows
BootGUI=0
DoubleBuffer=1
AutoScan=1
WinVer=4.10.1998
; logo=1 to hide the boot up screen during winboot
logo=0

Some instructions may be peculiar to 4dos, which I use. I think
just in the initial validate call and set of boot time.

--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>

On 3 Jan 2007 13:35:04 -0800, "jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk"
<jameshanley39@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Is this really a problem with new computers? It seems not
so hard most of the time, in rare cases you might have to
look it up but usually not. In extreme cases you might just
unplug the hard drive data cable, OR just hit
<CTRL><ALT><DEL> right before the boot drive were to start
loading the OS.





Not at all useful, you can do ctrlaltdel anytime. If all
you want is a stop in HDD activity before doing it, hit <F8>
to get the windows boot menu.



Unnecessary

.... as it does when you hit the F-key.

There's nothing elegant about setting and unsetting
(anything) to toggle this, when you can just ctrlaltdel or
hit F8.

kony wrote:
i think that 3 finger salute didn't work while win xp was loading.
I remember it not wokring immeidately but maybe not at all..

was a laptop any anyhow I could navigate the menu that offered safe
mode anyway, up and down.. So if a usb keyb issue can cause it not to
work even up till that point, I can say that it wasn't a usb keyb issue
stopping me from getting CTRL+ALT+DELETE to work at that point.