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Saturday, October 17, 2015

Safe Mode was not so safe for me


I recently purchased a new Epson wireless projector for the classes I run while I am in Florida.  I was hoping for the wireless to be the industry standard Miracast.  I really wanted to be able to connect all my devices to the projector simply and easily.  Instead, I needed to install Epson software on each computer and tablet. 
After playing with Epson’s wireless system for an entire day, I decided that I would give up on it.  So, I decided that I would attach a Miracast device (Netgear PTV 3000) to the HDMI port on the projector and use Miracast on my computer and Android Tablet.  Which works fine I might add.   Getting there was a bit of a problem.
The computer I use is a Yoga Tablet 2 with Windows 10.  It has a touch screen and a wireless Bluetooth keyboard.  I had installed the Epson wireless software (EasyMP) on it while I was doing my testing.  The software worked well while I was connected to the projector but it added an audio driver that Interfered with the audio on my system when I wasn’t wanting to project.  So, now that I have decided to go with Miracast, I wanted to uninstall the Epson Software (EasyMP).  It turns out that it would not uninstall.  It says that it cannot do the uninstall while it is in use and I wasn’t using it at the time.  I disabled the audio driver but that didn’t help either.  So, here is where the story starts.
I decided that the easiest way to uninstall it would be to boot up in Safe Mode and do it from there.   
To get to Safe Mode I went to the command prompt – typed msconfig – then selected Boot and Safe Mode.  I rebooted my system and it came up with my userID asking for my password.   As it turns out, touch screen doesn’t work in Safe Mode and neither did my Bluetooth keyboard.
I now have an Electronic Brick with no way to get started.  Even rebooting didn’t help.  It came right back to the sign in screen.  Very very scary!

After the scare settled, I thought of a possible solution.  I ran out to a nearby Source store, purchased a wireless (USB) keyboard, mouse and batteries.  Just $40 later I was able to sign in – uninstall the Epson software and reboot back to my normal Windows 10 environment.  It is so nice to have my touch screen and my Bluetooth keyboard back.