How to boot Windows 10 into ‘Safe Mode’

If you’ve been using Microsoft Windows for any length of time you probably know that there are times when it helps to boot Windows into Safe Mode.

In a nutshell, booting into Safe Mode forces Windows to load just the most basic Windows files and hardware drivers. This helps a great deal when trying to remove stubborn viruses and track down faulty hardware drivers.

In Windows 7 (and most previous versions) starting the system in Safe Mode was easy. All you had to do was keep pressing the F8 key during system startup until the Boot Menu appeared. But that changed after Windows 7. 

Now that we have Windows 10, booting into Safe Mode requires a different procedure altogether. Actually, there are several ways to do it, and this excellent short video bySmith Technical Resources demonstrates the two easiest methods:

As you can see, it takes a few extra steps to boot Windows 10 (and Windows 8 for that matter) into Safe Mode. But that being said, there are times when we need to do it anyway.