Easiest way of booting into Safe Mode from DOA laptop?

Hello everyone,

I have a friend who has tasked me with removing the dreaded "Interpol" scareware virus from his Windows 8 laptop. Sadly, this means he can't boot into Windows 8, as the virus just locks him out. How can I boot into Safe Mode, so I can run the "Power Eraser" tool from Norton (handy tip!) to remove it?

EDIT: If this can't be done, how can I tell the PC to boot from the DVD-Rom drive?

Many thanks in advance

The key will vary with the make of Laptop. Safe mode may be F8. On Toshiba change boot order may be F12. But you will likely need WinPE 4.0 unless you turn off secure boot and UEFI.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/17058-secure-boot-enable-disable-uefi.html

...just for grins, hold the shift key on left side down and continuously tap the F8 key while booting...

I don't suppose the Norton utility has a CD/DVD you could use to boot into a Norton utility and remove the virus from offline?

https://security.symantec.com/nbrt/npe.aspx

It's just an .EXE file. If I could get into Safe Mode, I could run it from there, right?

Download the liveCD & Run, this is a free tool from MS:


Windows Defender Offline - Windows 7 Help Forums

theog said:

Download the liveCD & Run, this is a free tool from MS:


Windows Defender Offline - Windows 7 Help Forums

Click to expand...

Thanks for this. How do I boot from the CD, though? Windows 8 doesn't like boot CDs much, right?

EDIT: Ignore this post, as I've just read the thread on the program. So it should still boot from this CD with Secure Boot enabled?

[DEL]No, probably not. Disable Secure Boot then the CD will boot. Re-enable when done.[/DEL]

Bogus info, it will boot, see post below.

Ztruker said:

No, probably not. Disable Secure Boot then the CD will boot. Re-enable when done.

Click to expand...

Windows Defender Offline - Windows 7 Help Forums

is signed by Microsoft, therfore will fully supports Windows 8/8.1, uEFI, GPT & Secure Boot.

Thanks theog, did not know that. Another item I need to add to my "Learn about" list.

Ztruker said:

Thanks theog, did not know that. Another item I need to add to my "Learn about" list.

Click to expand...

3rd party software,which fully supports Windows 8/8.1, uEFI, GPT & Secure Boot, will use WinPE4x64 to boot the CD/DVD/USB.

Yet when I created the recovery flash drive from Windows 8, which is part of Windows 8, it would not boot unless I disabled Secure Boot.

I know it's not 3rd party software, but you would think MS would get it right.

I wonder if the recovery discs will boot or will I have to disable Secure Boot for them as well? New SSD should be here Thursday so by Friday I'll know for sure.

Is the Recovery Flash Drive formatted to FAT32?


http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html

& boot in UEFI mode.

I don't remember but I think it was. I wiped it out creating a EFI bootable flash drive for AOEMI. I'll try creating it again and see what I get then check BOOT Device info in setup.

Thanks