I am trying to defrag and when I go to safe mode all I get is a blank screen. I cannot run scandisk or defrag from the regular desktop (never have been able to) as something keeps writing to my hard disk and these won't run except in safe mode. Have run virus scanner as well as spyware removers. Reloaded windows 98SE to no avail. Oh yes, I booted to DOS and ran the scanreg/restore file and restored the registry from a few days ago but no help. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Bill

Hello, and Welcome to D-A-L.

Try to start Safe Mode from DOS:

1. Restart your computer in MS-DOS Mode.
2. From a command prompt type "win /d:m" without the quotation marks.

(Ref; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/142544/en-us )
Post back with your results.

Dan,
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, it didn't help. The screen still, goes to a blank. I can ctrl/alt/del to restart from that blank screen but that's it.
Bill

Hmmm. OK, try the steps under "Windows 98 Does Not Start in Safe Mode" from this MSKB article;

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188867/en-us

Are you familiar with bios (cmos) use/actions in general?