Question Safe mode not exactly safe! (Mouse would not work, zero zip nada)

gn842a

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This happened on Win 8.1 but I note Win 8.1 does not have its own forum.

My RX 590 arrived today and to my amazement it actually can get through benchmarks without crashing. So the faithful R9-380 gets moved upstairs to the household's secondary pc.

Not hard right? Pull out the R9-200 and put in the R9-380. At first the desktop background was bloated, the way it can be with a swap like that. But something was churning and soon there was a black out as the screen reset and came back perfectly normal. It must have found some kind of drivers.

I should have stopped there, right! But no, I knew I was supposed to go into Safe Mode, do a ddu uninstall, and then get the best drivers. So I booted into safe mode and: My mouse stopped working. It worked in UEFI, it worked pretty much everywhere except Safe Mode. To make matters worse I could not get OUT of Safe Mode. I was trapped. Either in Safe Mode without a mouse, or in UEFI. Didn't matter if I rebooted. I tried a "repair" cycle and was informed that Windows could not complete the repair.

The keyboard worked in Safe Mode but the mouse did not. I switched USB ports and the keyboard still worked and the mouse still did not. An internet search was not particularly helpful. I couldn't find a discussion of a mouse not working specifically and only in Safe Mode. It may be out there, but I am not aware of it.

I disconnected the psu GPU (!). This is not as crazy as it might sound. The upstairs build has an A10-5800k apu, so if there are problems with the psu GPU one can surely just disconnect it right? I ran that computer for months with no psu GPU at all. But this time, with the R9-380 disconnected, it would just give a post noise and then hang up on a black screen.

At some point I remembered that only two or three weeks ago I had cloned the computer's 128 gig ssd to a 500 gig ssd and that the 128 gig ssd was stashed in the closet. I hauled it out and was able to boot to a working OS. The mothballed 128 gig ssd needed new drivers (it was used to working with the R9-200) but I wasn't about to mess with that.

So I cloned it on to the no-mouse drive. And as soon as the cloning was done I detached the 128 gig and booted to the 500 gig clone which was now fully operational, except the desktop was magnified and fuzzy. I thought: No way I'm going into safe mode again to uninstall old drivers. I found the video utility on DEVICES. It was not labeled and was not recognized. I right clicked and chose Microsoft's "update drivers" and boom, it started a download and before it was even done everything snapped into focus. Sometimes doing things "wrong" (installing in regular mode) is "right."

My question is: Why did the mouse turn off in Safe Mode? Was it related to the changing of the gpus? Was there any other solution? I feel lucky to have had a not too out of date mirror to boot with. Anyhow this is what drives me nuts about computers. This was going to be a 20 minute job it ended up taking 3 hours and even so I finessed the issue, I did not find out why the mouse had gone dead in Safe Mode. I narrowly avoided a complete reinstall.

Greg N
 
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What mouse are you using; make and model wired/wireless? Is the BIOS set to CSM/ Auto or UEFI? Further, "I disconnected the psu. This is not as crazy as it might sound. The upstairs build has an A10-5800k apu, so if there are problems with the psu one can surely just disconnect it right? I ran that computer for months with no psu at all" You need to explain this some more, because it makes no sense.

FYI the drivers for both the R9-200 and R9-380 are the same.
 
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gn842a

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What mouse are you using; make and model wired/wireless? Is the BIOS set to CSM/ Auto or UEFI? Further, "I disconnected the psu. This is not as crazy as it might sound. The upstairs build has an A10-5800k apu, so if there are problems with the psu one can surely just disconnect it right? I ran that computer for months with no psu at all" You need to explain this some more, because it makes no sense.

FYI the drivers for both the R9-200 and R9-380 are the same.

The A10-5800k has graphic psu in the cpu chip. That was originally why I bought it. Later I added a gpu because the gpu-in-the-chip is not as good as an add-on gpu. But you don't need to have a PCIe gpu. For an apu to refuse to boot and act as if there was no gpu installed is very odd.

The mouse was/is wired. It's a G100s logitech optical. It's been there for years. It should not have suddenly "disappeared" from the system. I am thinking that, even though I never gave any uninstall command at any time, that somehow the mouse driver was uninstalled in all of this--all the more weird since the keyboard stayed installed.

The BIOS is UEFI, never seen anything else, it's an ASUS mobo. F2 A85 V-pro.

The drivers may be the same, as you say. But when I joined the OS from several weeks ago to the 380, the resulting desktop did not look like good drivers were installed (very large icons). That old OS had the R9-200's drivers on and had had them for years. The new/mirror of the old OS, when booted up, also had R9-200 drivers and that desktop also showed large icons. It didn't get "better" till I clicked "update."

So, whatever the explanation, the R9-380 did not start to behave until the install driver command was given anew.

I'm actually aware of backwards and forwards driver capabilities. My R9-380 has been running on the RX 590 drivers for a couple of weeks while other issues got sorted out. (another story)

But I think, yes, I was foolish to go into Safe Mode to do a DDU uninstall when the R9-380 had shown signs of working well just being left alone. But it did not seem to be a harmful thing to put them in again. And to be fair, I have had these past three weeks enough issues with GPU stability and gotten enough advice about installing drivers that I didn't really think about it. New GPU for the machine, gets new drivers. Go into safe mode, do DDU, get new drivers.

I never got that far. I got trapped in a PC that only wanted to be in Safe Mode and I had no mouse to get out.

FWIW the R9-380's drivers (in its new home upstairs) currently show a 2017 date whereas the RX 590's (downstairs, where the R9-380 was running only a few hours ago) show 5/21/2019 as date. I didn't check the R9-200 and its current status is mothballed.

What is of concern to me is whether there's a Houdini technique to get out of Safe Mode if the mouse is not working. I did read something about using msconfig but I don't see how, one can bring up the box using key commands but without a mouse one can't choose different options.
 
LOL, you did not write you were running without a GPU, you wrote I ran that computer for months with no PSU at all . Okay I get it :)

As far as a "Houdini" getting out of safemode with keyboards. Alt f4 will close windows and/or bring up an exit window. The default is "Shutdown" and pressing the Enter button with shut down your PC.
 
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Colif

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Win 8.1 forum is called legacy... its a long story

I suspect a driver wasnt loaded that should have been.

On a positive note, good about the 590!

thing is, safe mode uses default drivers so they must be corrupted in some way to not work in safe mode.

Is mouse still a problem now we worked out how a PC can even turn on and run without a PSU for several months?
 

gn842a

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I must confess that I make booboos between cpus and psus which is a pretty dumb thing to do. Too many pu's to keep straight I guess. Sorry about that. I found at least one instance of making the mistake and crossed it out rather than edited it so people will "get" the context.

I fail to see why a system that is going to be supported till 2022 is "legacy".
 

gn842a

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LOL, you did not write you were running without a GPU, you wrote I ran that computer for months with no PSU at all . Okay I get it :)

As far as a "Houdini" getting out of safemode with keyboards. Alt f4 will close windows and/or bring up an exit window. The default is "Shutdown" and pressing the Enter button with shut down your PC.

I can't believe I've used desktops for almost 40 years without knowing this.

BUT UPON REBOOT, if you used Alt f4 to shut down, are you booted back into safe mode or do you get returned to regular mode??? Frankly yesterday's experience was so traumatic that I have no plans to go back into safe mode any time soon. If any of you out there is feeling ambitious and wants to go into Safe Mode to see what happens upon reboot, I would be very interested. But this is definitely a "you go first" situation for me!

It's easy to shut down a computer. What's hard is to get it to re-start, and if you can get it to restart, to restart in a way that you like.

I just tried Alt f4 (to exit normal mode) and it's pretty effective. The first thing it did was kill my browser windows.

Greg N
 
I must confess that I make booboos between cpus and psus which is a pretty dumb thing to do. Too many pu's to keep straight I guess. Sorry about that. I found at least one instance of making the mistake and crossed it out rather than edited it so people will "get" the context.

I fail to see why a system that is going to be supported till 2022 is "legacy".
Yea that's one botched change to the forum.

They grouped a bunch of os forums under one legacy category. This made all of my windows XP threads disappear.
 
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gn842a

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Yea that's one botched change to the forum.

They grouped a bunch of os forums under one legacy category. This made all of my windows XP threads disappear.

"legacy" to me means questions like "how do I copy all the files from one disk to another in dos?"

Or

"How much RAM do I need to run Win 3.1?"

I used to think that legacy was for losers till someone explained to me that you could have $500k in CNC machining equipment that runs on Win XP and only Win XP and that if your $1k Win XP machine died you were out $501k.

Anyhow, would like to know if there is a "sure" way to exit Safe Mode using keyboard commands only. Alt F4 sounds easy but it's what happens on reboot.

Are we of the view that I need to find the mouse driver and update it as a precaution against future events? Sheesh. Mouses are so simple they don't even need specific OEM drivers, in the usual case.

Greg N
 
I can't believe I've used desktops for almost 40 years without knowing this.

BUT UPON REBOOT, if you used Alt f4 to shut down, are you booted back into safe mode or do you get returned to regular mode??? Frankly yesterday's experience was so traumatic that I have no plans to go back into safe mode any time soon. If any of you out there is feeling ambitious and wants to go into Safe Mode to see what happens upon reboot, I would be very interested. But this is definitely a "you go first" situation for me!

It's easy to shut down a computer. What's hard is to get it to re-start, and if you can get it to restart, to restart in a way that you like.

I just tried Alt f4 (to exit normal mode) and it's pretty effective. The first thing it did was kill my browser windows.

Greg N
It will reboot in normal mode (to normal windows), unless you configured msconfig to always boot to safemode.
 

gn842a

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It will reboot in normal mode (to normal windows), unless you configured msconfig to always boot to safemode.

I most certainly did not configure it to do that. I should probably tape this command somewhere on the case so I don't forget it.

But how screwed up was this situation? I mean, if you are in safe mode, and you power down holding the power button on the case, do you automatically boot up in safe mode again? I think that if you do a simple power off in safe mode the normal thing is for the next boot to be back in normal mode.

IOW, was the unwillingness of the system to leave safe mode itself the abnormality (along with the mouse driver)?

Thanks, Greg N
 
I most certainly did not configure it to do that. I should probably tape this command somewhere on the case so I don't forget it.

But how screwed up was this situation? I mean, if you are in safe mode, and you power down holding the power button on the case, do you automatically boot up in safe mode again? I think that if you do a simple power off in safe mode the normal thing is for the next boot to be back in normal mode.

IOW, was the unwillingness of the system to leave safe mode itself the abnormality (along with the mouse driver)?

Thanks, Greg N
It always reboots into normal mode for me.
 

gn842a

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It always reboots into normal mode for me.

Well I'm not even sure what to do in that case. It would seem that something complicated occurred at the OS level. The simplest answer is do nothing because it is currently working. I probably should build a new PC up there I'm just too lazy to do it. And I don't want to build one like the one I have now because it's glitchy. So I'm not sure what course I would take. Maybe get one of the best and fanciest apus. Perhaps they are not as glitchy as graphics cards.