Safe mode

Safe mode is a recovery feature of Microsoft Windows which allows to start the operating system in a light-weight configuration. It enables only the most essential services and drivers, whose list is stored in the registry, which makes it useful for troubleshooting. The main difference between Windows Recovery Environment and safe mode is that while the recovery environment is stored on a separate partition - which makes it possible to access it as long as the boot manager is functional, safe mode operates on the main Windows installation. It was introduced in Windows 95, but wasn't included in NT-based versions until Windows 2000.

It evolved from a similar feature in MS-DOS 6, which allowed the user to press either the F5 key during boot to skip the parsing of  and   completely, or the F8 key to enter so-called interactive mode, where the operating system would print out each configuration statement and ask whether should it be executed.

In Windows 10, safe mode includes the following configurations:
 * Safe Mode, which loads only services and drivers whitelisted in.
 * Safe Mode with Networking, which loads only services and drivers whitelisted in.
 * Safe Mode with Command Prompt, which is the same as regular Safe Mode, but runs the executable specified in the  string value in   (set to   by default, hence the name) instead of the regular shell.