If I'm not mistaken pressing F8 at boot-up should work, though certain things you should be careful about:
* Some motherboards have BIOS that use F8 to trigger special options (requiring (in this case you have to wait past the point the BIOS is scanning for key)
* The "window" where F8 is detected at Windows startup is pretty small, so you often have to be "button-mashing" (i.e. repeatedly pressing key rapidly)
* you don't want to be using a wireless keyboard or one connected through a PS/2-to-USB adaptor -- from a cold boot (i.e. using power switch) the keyboard won't be active until *after* Windows has pretty much started (i.e. well past the "window" where F8 can be used to select Safe Mode). In this case you could try selecting restart at the Windows signon screen (provided you've not configured Windows to automatically log you in at boot).

If I'm not mistaken you can use MSCONFIG to set up Windows to bring up the selection for Safe Boot at next boot.

>Hi,
>
>I am still working on the attempt to remove Avast from my computer. The utility avastclear.exe requires that the PC is rebooted in a Safe Mode (after you start avastclear.exe in Admin mode).
>
>But my Windows 7 - for some time - won't reboot. When I click on the Restart the computer shuts down but the screen stays blue. And I have to restart the computer manually.
>
>I have two questions:
>1. I can start the computer in Safe mode by pressing F8 on the OS start up. Would it be the same as Restarting in Safe Mode? And do you think - guess - that I can then run avastclear.exe?
>2. When I run autoruns.exe from the System Internales, it shows a million programs. Which ones I could figure out causing the stop of the Reboot?
>
>TIA