Philippe,

The drives running in DOS compatibility mode in SAFE MODE may be normal
depending on your motherboard and bios.  Since only essential drivers are
loaded in Safe Mode, if your motherboard has special 32 bit drivers for
Windows, they may not be loaded.

You might look elsewhere for your problem with booting.  It does definitely
sound like a driver issue.  There is a routine that I had to go through
(but long and slow) that Microsoft has for locating startup problems.  From
your description, you will probably have to start deleting your drivers a
group at a time until it does boot.  The drivers will have to be re-loaded
so have your drivers handy before starting this routine.

The other possibility is a problem with a program loading at startup.  You
can quickly find out if this is the problem by temporarily turning all of
them off in MSCONFIG.

Good luck.

Doug


At 3/10/01 04:03 PM, Philippe J Beaulieu wrote:

>I'm having quite a problem with my computer. It won't completely boot up and
>when I reboot, it offers a choice of safe mode. once there, I go into the
>control panel\system and find that my A Drive, C drive and D drive are all
>working in ms-dos file compatibility mode. I have used the troubleshooter in
>WinME with no success
>any help greatly appreciated

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