There are only three methods I know of to boot into Safe Mode in XP.

1) Press F8 during start-up and it will be an option. Not in my case. In my case I have two options "Boot from HD" and "Boot from CD".

2) Run MSCONFIG, click on the Boot.ini tab and check the /safeboot:minimal option. Since my system is installed on the E: drive I do not have a Boot.ini tab showing up in MSCONFIG. To test this out, I copied my e:\boot.ini file to c:\, which then allowed the Boot.ini tab to showup in MSCONFIG. However, when I checked "/safeboot:minimal" and restarted, it still did not boot into safemode. I imagine this is because it only set the /safeboot switch on my c:\boot.ini which is not where my system is located. Odd as it sounds, my E is my system drive and my C is just another partition where I store stuff (mostly my music and movies).

3) Manually edit e:\boot.ini to include /safeboot:minimal or /safeboot:network at the end. Then manually restart. This is the only option that works now.

So whenever I need to boot to Safe Mode, I need to edit my boot.ini, and then to get out of Safe Mode, I need to re-edit my boot.ini again (otherwise it keeps loading in safe mode).

Any ideas how to make this easier? I've tried google-tarding but I can't find anything this specific.

I've never seen F8 not work personally.

Is your BIOS intercepting F8 or something to display the HD/CD prompt?

I'd try picking boot from HD, then start hittin F8.

yes you have a bios that selects what to boot from with f8, you have to choose hard drive and as you are pressing enter on "hard drive" have your finger on f8 ready to go nuts, it should bring up the std safe mode menu then

Ah, I didn't think about hitting the F8 key after selecting Boot from HD. That did the trick! Thanks!