Computer freezes

[i]

I have a friend who has a Fujitsu-Siemens computer. He has installed two antivirus programs (Norman and Norton), and now the computer freezes almost immediately after startup.

Is it possible to solve this without loosing all the data on the computer? He has not backed up his data for a long time, so any help will be very much appriciated.

[Mike_26]

Boot Windows XP into Safe Mode by tapping F8 lots of times at startup. Choose Safe Mode in the list and press Enter. (Note: if you get a keyboard error, then tap F8 after the post screen has come up). Uninstall one or both of the antivirus programs and try again.
Or use the System Restore utility (in the start menu under accessories, system tools).

Hope that helped
Mike

[i]

I have tried (several times) tapping F8 LOTS of times to enter Safe Mode without succes. The only thing that happens is that I am asked to choose to boot from the harddisc or the dvd drive. Then it starts up in the regular way ... and freezes after a few seconds.

I thought that maybe it wasn't possible to enter Safe Mode through the F8 button startup on a Fujitsu-Siemens computer.

[Schrauber]

Press F8, leave the bootmenue with F4, and immediately F8 again.
Then you will be able to choose the "safe mode".

[i]

The F4 did not work either.

But I found out that "Quick Boot" was enabled in the BIOS. When I disabled "Quick Boot" it was possible to choose Safe Mode when tapping F8 during startup.

So we solved the problems on my friend's computer, and he is very pleased :-)

Thank you for your answers.