Cant boot into safe mode

[Steve24by7]

I want to boot my XP Professional to safe mode on my Macbook Pro (I am a newbie to mac, doing Migrate my PC). I tried to use Virtual Machines->Send Key->F8 during the WinXP splash screen a few times, but that didnt work. I disabled all keystroke mappings on the Macbook but no joy. Thanks in advance.

[rcardona2k · Accepted solution]

I want to boot my XP Professional to safe mode on my Macbook Pro (I am a newbie to mac, doing Migrate my PC). I tried to use Virtual Machines->Send Key->F8 during the WinXP splash screen a few times, but that didnt work. I disabled all keystroke mappings on the Macbook but no joy.

Hitting F8 on the splash screen is too late. You'll want to click in the VM window at POST and hold the fn key (lower left corner) then type F8 a few times. This is unless you've changed your OS X System Preferences in Keyboard "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys", then you would just type F8. The default setting requires VM focus and typing fn-F8.

[Steve24by7]

That did not work, either, thanks. I am thinking about copying the Vmware files back to the PC, booting the VM there and trying it using a PC keyboard. Seems like, however, that would be a lot of effort. No function keys seem to work during boot, as I have tried fnf12 and fnf2 to see if I could impact the boot process before the windows nt boot begins, but no luck.

[WoodyZ]

I have no problem booting to Safe Mode under Fusion running Windows XP and you just need to configure you Keyboard and or Expose/Spaces preferences properly and or the VMware Fusion keyboard preferences.

You also can configure XP to boot directly to Safe Mode using MSCONFIG.

Have a look at: How To Enter Windows XP Safe Mode Using the System Configuration Utility

[rcardona2k]

I've used F8 to get the safe mode dozens of times so it's definitely possible. More than likely your VM is not grabbing the keyboard/mouse from OS X. The rare case would be where the cursor remains a gloved hand instead of disappearing early at boot time before the XP splash screen appears.

I can think of at least two ways to slow down the boot process to help you. One is to introduce a BIOS boot delay as described in a section of

Second one is if your XP machine makes it to the desktop you can also edit c:\boot.ini and duplicate the line under "Operating Systems", this will give you the default of 30 seconds to enter F8 and go into more advanced troubleshooting, e.g.

[Steve24by7]

I am certain you are correct, and your system behaves as it should. You mention that I should have my preferences set "correctly", so if it is not too much trouble, do you mind listing all of the relevant settings please, and how to find them? Thanks!