Thinkpads Forum

Have identified that this was caused by Win 7 updates. (Aug 2013) The trouble is that I can't get to the safe boot screen. Nothing I have tried will break the boot cycle in the Win 7 Pro start cycle. I get a darken screen and blinking cursor and there it sits (20 plus min.) I have reloaded & restored from Backup HDD the last time this happened.

Got to be a better way. (Ubuntu Maybe with Open Office) Funny thing Windows dose not time out and go to safe boot menu.
This is a Product Number 0578N8U Core I3 with 4 gb memory. The laptop worked just fine before the Win 7 updates were installed. (I made a complete backup prior to the updates) I have found a specific KB that might be causing the problem, but right now that is of no help.
Any thoughts or suggestions on key combinations to break boot cycle (I have tried F8, both holding and tapping (Fn F8)).

I am going to do a full recovery, as I need the laptop, but have posted so that when it happens again I will have an alternative to recovery I hope.

Yeah, try booting with a Linux Live CD to see if you can get access to the hard drive.

I have gotten past the freeze. I can not explain how it happened at the hardware/software level. I plugged in a restore USB drv (Acronis Trueimage 2011) and as I was in the process of making a selection, the program defaulted to Windows boot. This broke the freeze and so I restarted the laptop again after it first booted. No problems, so I downloaded the new updates, but only a couple at a time. Once all were installed I rebooted and it still worked like advertised. I ran Comodo to fix any any problems and rebooted, still worked fine. Used CCleaner and also removed all the unneeded files from "MyDoc" I made a complete image backup with Acronis. So Far So Good.