Tweaking set safe mode resolution too high

[Boggin]

This article shows a pic of what you should see in Win 7 on tapping F8 as you switch on.

https://www.lifewire.com/advanced-boot-options-menu-2625801

[SFSecurity]

Hi Boggin,

Yep, I get that advanced menu options but the way it happens for me is slightly different. When the initial screen shows up with "Press F8 for Boot Menu" I get 3 "Safe Mode" and the "Boot Windows Normally" options. Then if I hit F8 again I get the menu you are referring to. I'm not sure why it happens this way, maybe it's the BIOS structure.

In any case I've tried System Restore 3 times and each time it fails with a screwy message.  Once it was saying it could not recover a temporary Internet file so it quit. Sorry, I don't have the exact wording, I didn't write it down.

My Apricorn DriveWire doesn't work with this drive so I can't connect it to a USB port on another, older computer that is not as powerful but I could copy off my personal data if it did work. Do you have a suggestion for a SATA to USB device that might work with a Seagate Barracuda 500 GB drive manufactured in April of 2012?

[Boggin]

Did you also try Last Known Good Configuration ?

I'm not familiar with your set up but a Google on the Apricorn Drivewire brought up a couple of links for an adapter, although now unavailable or sold out.

I'm not sure if you would be able to get this adapter from the computer vendor but it's this item - https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/848756-REG/Apricorn_ADW_USB_KIT_DriveWire_Universal_Hard_Drive.html

I did however come across this article which may or not meet your needs - https://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/apricorn-drivewire

Are you considering factory resetting if you can back up your personal stuff ?

[SFSecurity]

Yep, I've tried "Last Known Good Configuration" twice with the same results, it just went into the same "out of range" on the monitor.

As to DriveWire, I have 4 of them, one an older IDE based one for 2.5" and 3.5" drives. I have three of the newer ones which also have SATA capabilities like in the pix on BH Photo.

I talked with Apricorn yesterday and they discontinued DriveWire about 6 years ago because it didn't work with all 3.5" SATA drives. Their 2.5" (laptops) adapter still works fine. I checked several 3.5" SATA drives I have sitting around and it worked with some and not others. Oddly a 2 TB Seagate Barracuda drive made in December 2013 that I got thinking I might need to up my size works just fine with the DriveWire. 

The first link you provided is correct, Apricorn discontinued it about 6 years ago. Why BHPhoto still lists it is beyond me.

The second link is talking about a problem with IDE drives, not SATA drives. You can not do what they are suggesting on a SATA drive because the power for the drive is the same connector as the data connection. The power connector on IDE is the old style 4 pin one, on SATA it's a 16 pin thing and it is physically so close it would be hard to do it that way. But, I may have come up with a way to do it and a possible reason why the DriveWire device doesn't work with some SATA drives. I'll let you know after I test out the idea. 

The idea might work as there is a female to male SATA data only cable that I could find with a quick search using www.startpage.com (The only search engine with a European Privacy Seal) but it wouldn't get here until early September. Oh, well. Do I want to wait that long to try it? Not sure. At $1.55 with free shipping on eBay, I think I'll order it anyway just in case. Whether the idea of using a more robust power supply separate from the DriveWire one, who knows, I sure don't.

Meanwhile, I did order a new USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA (SATA) drive adapter cable from Cables to Go. Not cheap, $35.70 including shipping and tax. We'll see if that will let me access the data and let me migrate it. It can be done but the needed cable is female to female and a quick check on www.startpage.com (The only search engine with a European Privacy Seal!) shows that it has to be ordered from China and it won't arrive before the near the middle of September.

While waiting I'm running the steps from https://www.winhelp.us/repair-your-computer-in-windows-vista-or-7.html. Currently I'm running chkdsk: /R /X but it takes a looooong time.

[SFSecurity]

In addition to all else I've tried I'm following the procedures on https://www.winhelp.us/repair-your-computer-in-windows-vista-or-7.html but, boy is it slow in parts. The part I'm currently running is using CMD.exe, chkdsk: /R /X and it will likely take six or more hours.

I've run all the ones above that in the web site.

[SFSecurity]

 

Holy Guacamole!

I finally recovered the system. I went through 

https://www.winhelp.us/repair-your-computer-in-windows-vista-or-7.html

step by step and what seems to have done the trick was this:

Creating a new Boot Configuration Data store in Windows Vista or 7 if the previous bootrec steps failed

If renaming the BCD folder still did not work, the last resort is to look up Windows Boot Manager and Windows Boot Loader drive letters and paths from the bcdedit command output as shown earlier.

In case your device is in UEFI boot mode, the Boot Manager drive letter is still the same Z: you assigned earlier with diskpart.

Check and double-check the Windows Boot Manager drive letter and full path to Windows installation folder. If necessary, just run the bcdedit command again.

Enter the following command: bcdboot <the full Windows installation path> /s <the drive letter for Windows Boot Manager or UEFI partition>: /f ALL , for example: bcdboot E:\Windows /s C: /f ALL (Legacy boot) or bcdboot C:\Windows /s Z: /f ALL (UEFI boot).
Windows 7, Repair your computer, Command Prompt, Legacy boot mode. Create a new boot configuration data entry by running the 'bcdboot e:\windows /s C: /f ALL' command.

However, the directions were not exactly correct. Instead of <the full Windows installation path> I used just <Drive Letter>:\Windows as it did not recognize the path I had.  Also it did not recognize /f ALL so I dropped it.

When I rebooted it came up and did a restore to an earlier date that I thought had not worked. Since I tried several that did not seem to work I went back over two months. Now I have to do some updates. Oh well. Better that than having to totally start from scratch.

In any case, THANKS TO ALL OF YOU for sticking with me while I struggled through the worst crash I've ever had.

[Boggin]

Glad to see that you were able to get it fixed, but it doesn't answer why it happened in the first place.

What was the reason you were going to run the repair program ?

[SFSecurity]

The reason I was running the program was to see if it would be a good tool for the credit union that I'm President of the Board of Directors. I always test programs and run them for a while before suggesting that anyone use them.

I use Malwarebytes, JV16, Spybot Search & Destroy, CCleaner, and Glarys Utilities but I know that there are always little areas that are missed by every program so having as many that are functional is the best protection in the long run. On the other, older and slower computer, even though I have run each of the tools multiple times, I found a potential hack yesterday that was sitting on it from back in the day when it was owned by one of my clients over 4 years ago!

Well, I thought I had recovered my computer but it turns out there is still a problem, I can't run Safe Mode. Huh??? It goes into the same "out of range" display when I went to try it again. It starts in Normal Windows just fine, after I fixed a bunch of things, including the clock. It was reset to 2002. Anyway, I'm still struggling with solving that problem and have no clue what to do next.     

[Boggin]

In that case I don't think it would be a good idea to set safe mode/base video through msconfig as you wouldn't be able to access it to uncheck that option.

Are all of the machines Win 7 ?

I usually create a system image onto an external HDD before running a major program like WR, should I need to restore back.

Is it possible for you to do this and run the program on another Win 7 machine to see if this is Win 7 related or specific to your Win 7 machine.

Can you also post the specs of your machine and I'll pass this back to jpm.

[SFSecurity]

When I was cleaning out another hard drive to save files to CHKDSK came up and ran on both drives and, supposedly, fixed things. It sure did by deleting BOOTMGR so it couldn't go into SAFE MODE. After a bunch of fiddling around I got BOOTMGR back and tried SAFE MODE only to have the screen go blank yet again with only the "out of range" message showing.

Both machines are W7, the other one is much slower and has only 4 GB memory. As to creating an image on another drive, I'd gotten too lazy, partly because I've never needed it in the past, and didn't do it so now I'm stuck. This computer boots into NORMAL WINDOWS just fine, but no safe mode.

I've spent many too many hours with this problem and haven't been able  to find where the data is that sets the video monitor rate.

I'm beginning to think that since the computer is at least 6 years old - I don't recall when I built it, could be as much as 9 years old - that rather than waste a lot more time trying to figure out how it got Tweaked, I might just build a new on with a newer CPU and more memory. Not sure if I want to upgrade to W8.1 or W10, given what I've seen with them.

Anyway, I'm happy to try any further suggestions.

[Boggin]

The two main laptops that I use date from 2011 have been upgraded to Win 10 from Win 7 and I have another Win 7 one which was bought in 2010 and neither have had any trouble when using the program to boot into Safe Mode.

I'm still waiting for some feed back as to why the program could have screwed your graphics.

Can you create a system repair disk and create a system image and try the program on another machine.

[SFSecurity]

Sorry, haven’t had the time to dig into why it happened, but I found one possible clue as to what happened. It appears that the issue might be the frequency was getting set higher than the monitor could handle. The monitor can’t handle higher than 60 Hz.

Also, the computer dates from 2009 or 2010, so it might be an issue with the motherboard. I haven’t been able to get it back to the proper resolution, 1600x1080, and can’t figure out why.

[Boggin]

I was under the impression that the resolution was fine in normal mode ?

Safe Mode is usually 800x600 - at least it is on my laptops as it uses the onboard VGA.

[Boggin]

On checking my Win 10 laptop, Safe Mode defaults to 1024x768 with the option to reduce to 800x600 whereas my Win 7 laptop defaults to 800x600 but has a slider to increase to 1024x768.

As you are unable to get into Safe Mode then you won't be able check/set that resolution.

[Boggin]

It would seem that the solution to "out of range" is what jpm had posted earlier, which is to go Start - type msconfig - right click on msconfig and select Run as administrator, then check the box for Base Video under the Boot tab and then reboot.

I'm not sure if this will fix it for Safe Mode, but give it a try.