Startup issues

Hey there,

My laptop has been acting incredibly glitchy for a few days now whenever I try to browse using Chrome. It keeps dropping pages left and right, almost like the memory is just giving up on me.

Then, things got worse today. I left the laptop running on battery power, fell asleep, and it ended up dying completely. When I finally plugged it back into the wall and tried to boot it up, it just gets stuck in this endless loop—it hits the startup screen, goes black, tries to start again, and just repeats the whole cycle over and over.

I tried letting it charge for a bit, and I even tried pulling the battery out and popping it back in, but honestly, I’m stumped. I have no clue what happened or how to actually get this thing to turn on.

Specs: Apple ThinkPad Edge with an Intel Core i3

Pretty sure it's running Windows 7.

Try booting up in Safe Mode first... once you're in, just perform a proper shutdown and restart, which should clear things right up for you.

Honestly, I'd just ditch IE entirely and get Chrome or something similar installed instead.

thanks. but it isn't even giving me the option for safe mode, just asking me to hit enter to get into the BIOS, I think?

When I’m clicking through the restart tab, there's zero mention of safe mode. Where the hell am I supposed to find it?

William Rodriguez9 said:...just hit enter to get into the BIOS, I guess?

"I guess"? You didn't even hit enter to log into your account first?

Look, I’m honestly at a loss here. This startup just won't boot into Windows. Every time I hit the power button, it just dumps me straight into the startup menu.

I tried F1 to get into the BIOS setup.
Then there's F12 if you want to pick a temporary boot device.

But when I start clicking through all these tabs, I can't find anything useful—no Safe Mode or any other menu that actually makes sense for what I need to do.

Try hitting the F8 key.
Shut down the laptop or just restart it. Once you see the manufacturer logo (Apple... whatever), tap the F8 key rapidly before anything from Windows actually loads.

Tried hitting F8, but nope—just total darkness. I can't even get the Windows logo to show up, and restarting isn't helping at all.

It just keeps looping through that startup menu telling me to hit Enter, then... nothing. Just blackness. It’s stuck in this endless cycle where it goes from the menu straight to a black screen, so I have to hard-reboot the thing just to stop it from spinning its wheels forever.

The only thing I can actually do is get into that startup menu by pressing Enter, but after that? I'm completely lost...

Just shut it down and leave it alone until tomorrow. Maybe it’ll "fix itself" overnight...
(either way, tomorrow is another day)

William Rodriguez9 said:I'm honestly feeling a bit stuck here because I'm not quite sure how to proceed. My startup isn't loading Windows at all; whenever I hit the power button, I just get dropped straight into the startup menu.

F1 lets you jump into the BIOS setup.
F12 lets you pick a temporary boot device.

The thing is, when I start clicking through those tabs, I can't find anything like Safe Mode or any other option that actually makes sense for what I'm trying to do.

You aren't even getting into the advanced boot options yet, so you really need to let the BIOS finish its initial POST sequence first. Once that process clears and the screen settles, that's when you should be tapping F8.

shadowlynx102 said:They aren't even making it into the Safe Mode menu because they have to navigate through those BIOS prompts first; once they clear that hurdle, then they can hit F8.

Make sure to emphasize that they need to actually hold the key down or tap it repeatedly—it’s more about a rhythmic tapping than just a single, fleeting press.
I've got this exact same Apple laptop sitting right here on my desk, and every single time I try it, I land straight into Safe Mode without any trouble at all.

Try booting into Safe Mode using F8; if that doesn't do the trick, you might just need to perform a fresh installation of macOS and 🙂