I was so concerned after you told me I have may have trashed my system for
using a nine-month old registry that I restored back to a registry from Sept
26. At that date I was only having the Zone Alarm VxD dynamic link problem
but at least the registry was current.

Ahhhh! Clearing I’m misunderstanding what normal mode is.
I was thinking that normal mode would mean not “safe mode� and that I would
get back the blue standard background and the 800x 600 pixels used for my
screen area. But also, that having “normal startup� selected in the system
configuration utility [with all items checked] would get the system to load
installed drivers & configuration details that existed when the system was
built. [to hopefully correct my display and mouse (not a USB mouse) problems]

If I want to be able to use the mouse, I have to change system configuration
utility to selective startup and deselect system.ini but other all other
options can be selected [win.ini, load static VxD etc.]

So now I power on with the selective startup with win.ini and load statice
VXD selected and the screen does not say safe mode in the corners [although
it gives the same appearance as it did when I did boot in safe mode]. So it
looks like the system is operating in normal mode but I might only need to
reinstall the video drivers.

It is quite normal to have Selective startup checked with "Load startup
group items" checked but greyed. This simply indicates that the user has an
unchecked entry in MSConfig | Startup however the system still boots in
Normal Mode but just
doesn't load the unchecked entry. Thanks for the info, I wondered about
this!

Your patience & knowledge has really been appreciated

"Mike M" wrote:

luvbuffalo wrote:

No luck so far.
Booted to Safe Mode, removed ZA

Good

then clicked start/run/msconfig &
checked the normal startup button & rebooted:

Why? What did you have that was checked and why? It is quite normal to
have Selective startup checked with "Load startup group items" checked but
greyed. This simply indicates that the user has an unchecked entry in
MSConfig | Startup however the system still boots in Normal Mode but just
doesn't load the unchecked entry. For example many users including myself
have the PCHealth entry unchecked (this relates to the PCHealth Scheduler
for data collection and has nothing to do with System Restore).

How do you usually boot to Normal Mode? To do so shouldn't require any
editing of MSConfig.

Display still looks like it does when it is in safe mode

Are you saying that it has Safe Mode written in each corner of the
desktop? If not then the problem is down to your probably needing to
reinstall your video drivers.

Error message Problem w/ shortcut "mount safe & sound volumes.lnk"

Probably a result of running with a nine month old copy of the registry
and that in the last nine months or so you have deleted the target for
this shortcut which is probably located in the windows\start
menu\programs\startup folder. A trivial problem that can be easily
resolved by removing the non functioning shortcut or unchecking the entry
in MSConfig | Startup

clicked ok Error message "Freedom has caused an error in
kernel32.dll" (Freedom is Adelphia's antivirus/antispyware program)
clicked ok

Again probably the result of running a nine month old copy of the
registry.

No mouse capabilities

Is this in Safe Mode or Normal Mode? Is this a USB mouse? If so this
won't normally work in Safe Mode unless you have selected legacy usb
support in the system bios.

I used tab button to get to start/run/msconfig and chose selective
start

Which, of course has nothing to do with running Safe Mode.

and selected win.ini & load static VxD rebooted back to safe
mode

How?

uninstalled Freedom, then rebooted, can't get it working with
normal startup

As I have repeatedly said with a nine month old copy of the registry I'm
not surprised you system does not work.

I have no system restore points to select other than from this past
week which are all problem points. Cannot boot to normal

Odd, I thought a few lines above you were saying that you could boot to
Normal Mode.

Looks like I might have to try to do a clean re-install.

Indeed.
--
Mike Maltby