Windows 8 safe mode

[DatBrummie]

Hi all.

Working on my girlfriend's laptop, she said she didn't have antivirus installed so I talked her through installing Avast. When trying to do a full system scan, Avast crashed.

I had a look and it turns out she had McAfee installed all along so I assume that's what caused Avast to crash. Tried to uninstall McAfee through control panel and it said she didn't have sufficient access to uninstall it, and to contact the system administrator.

Checked in User Accounts and her account is the admin account, and also the only account. So I'm not too sure why she couldn't uninstall it but moving on.

Enabled minimal safe boot with msconfig (it let her open MSconfig and change that stuff but not uninstall McAfee, go figure) and then restarted the PC in minimal safe mode.

However now that she's trying to log in, it's saying invalid password, she also can't see her mouse pointer on the log in screen.

What do you suggest? Could being in minimal safe mode and not network safe mode be causing log in issues?

How can she switch back to normal boot, or network safe mode without going in to windows and doing it with MSconfig, as she can't log in to windows to use MSconfig.

She doesn't have any windows media like a restore disc or anything

[SubTract]

from the login screen hold shift and press restart It will bring up advanced boot options you can select troubleshooting then advanced boot options. Then when you reboot it will bring up the black screen with white numbered options for startup options I think 3 is safemode with networking. (it will also have the normal boot option as number 1) you should be able to search for mcafee uninstall through the start screen. Right click on it and select run as administrator.

 

Depending on the brand of the laptop there will be a built in recovery partition. You can access by pressing a particular screen from post screen (Press escape on the post logo screen and it will be written down the bottom)