COM / LPT ports in safe mode

[DuffMan]

is there anyway to boot into safe mode with support for using LPT or COM ports? My machine has recently decided that it will from now on only boot to safe mode and having gone through lots of help to correct this "windows protection error" im back to square one.

If however I could boot to safe mode and somehow enable the use of my LPT or COM ports i could save my critical files using a direct cable connection and simply format the damn thing.

Does anyone know how to make this custom boot?
ta

[Cricket]

Sorry, I don't know how to get those ports working in Safe Mode.

But if you have a second computer you could remove the hard drive from this computer and install it in the other one and then move your important files over. Put this hard drive back into it's computer and reformat and reinstall.

Cricket

[DuffMan]

one is a laptop one is a desktop :S my desktop has gone mad. i tried booting safe mode with networking but it insists that the network connection is unavailable

i ran step by step and it looks like it dies at the point where it tries to load either msmouse.vxd or more likely vpaec.vxd. is there anyway i can stop these trying to load? what are they for? i tried simply pressing N on step by step and the protection error still occured.

So taking a wild guess I uninstalled the video card and hey presto all is well. the video card was reinstalled automatically using drivers already on the machine. so how this has fixed the problem is beyond me.

thanks for the help though