How to Boot into Safe Mode When F8 Fails

A well-known way to get into safe mode is to reboot and tap or hold the F8 key until you are offered boot options. At this point you simply choose “Safe mode with networking”.


What is safe mode? Safe mode disables most of your processes, services, startup items and drivers allowing you to quickly runs malware scans or look for other potential problems. Most malware can be difficult to remove if you’re not in safe mode because attempts to remove the malware will fail simply because it is running and you can’t delete files in use.

But, what if F8 isn't working? I can give you numerous ways to find out why F8 is not working but I’m guessing you don’t want to waste time doing diagnostics to get to diagnostics. As long as you can boot into Windows normally, here’s how.

Go to “Start” then “Control Panel”.

Click on “Administrative Tools”

Click on “System Configuration”

Click on the Boot tab

Select “Safe boot” under Boot options as seen below:



Your computer will now ask you to reboot so accept and your computer will restart in safe mode.

Once finished, repeat the steps above and select “Normal startup” and reboot to return to Windows.

If you're still having problems, you're welcome to make a post looking for help on our Support Forums at http://forums.majorgeeks.com.