Can you boot to safe mode?

"Arsenio Oloroso" wrote in message
...
Much obliged if anyone can help me out on what's going
wrong with my bootup sequence.

I lent a computer to my son who recently returned it to me.
Now, it doesn't boot properly. In a nutshell, here's what
happens: the start-up sequence progresses to a point where
my computer screen just blinks and then goes off. While
disk activity continues, I can't tell what's going on. The
Windows GUI doesn't appear.

I'm pretty sure that Windows loads to completion because,
after the disk access noise finishes, I can press the Start
button on the keyboard and shut down properly by hitting
"U" and [enter]--even though I can't see what's happening.

So, here's what I did:

AFter poring over my Windows manuals, I tried to diagnose
the problem. PRessing F8 on a reboot, I selected the option
to create a bootlog file in order to see what was failing
to load.

However, upon rebooting in safe mode and searching for the
bootlog.txt file, my computer wasn't able to find it.

One more try: I rebooted again and opted for step-by-step
confirmation of the start-up sequence. Everything went fine
until the computer got to loading the WIN drivers. Shortly
after that process began, the screen blinked and went off.

I'm glad I've somewhat isolated the problem, but I don't
know what to do next.

Can anyone provide any leads?

Arsenio