Hi John, The usual way to boot into safe mode is to upon turning on the PC or laptop, wait a few seconds after you press the power button on. Now start pressing the F8 key with approx. 1 second between presses. This will invoke the boot menu from which you can then use the arrow keys to choose safe mode and press enter to continue. As for sound in safe mode, no, you can't get sound working in this environment. Paul. -----Original Message----- From: vip_students-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:vip_students-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John O'Regan Sent: 28 March 2011 12:35 To: VIP Students Subject: [vip_students] Safe Mode Hello All, Just wondering if any of you boffins has a technique for booting the PC into Safe Mode. Without sighted assistance, that is. And once in Safe Mode, is there a further technique to get the sound working? Because when you start in Safe Mode, Windows doesn't load the device drivers for the sound card. Bit of a Catch 22. So I'm thinking maybe I could boot from a memory stick or something like that. Anyways, any input appreciated, thanks, John -- I am using the free version of SPAMfighter. We are a community of 7 million users fighting spam. SPAMfighter has removed 1812 of my spam emails to date. Get the free SPAMfighter here: http://www.spamfighter.com/len The Professional version does not have this message NCBI: Celebrating 80 Years ******************************************************************** National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) is a company limited by guarantee (registered in Ireland No. 26293) . Our registered office is at Whitworth Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9. NCBI is also a registered Charity (chy4626). NOTICE: The information contained in this email and any attachments is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient you should not use, disclose, distribute or copy any of the content of it or of any attachment; you are requested to notify the sender immediately of your receipt of the email and then to delete it and any attachments from your system. NCBI endeavours to ensure that emails and any attachments generated by its staff are free from viruses or other contaminants. However, it cannot accept any responsibility for any such which are transmitted. We therefore recommend you scan all attachments. Please note that the statements and views expressed in this email and any attachments are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of NCBI ********************************************************************