“One of the many benefits of Windows’ Safe Mode is that it displays services as they boot. This can help you identify services that could be causing the system to hang. However, booting in Safe Mode also disables a variety of services, some of which you might need to troubleshoot the problem at hand. Whether you’re troubleshooting a problem or you just want to see what’s going on when Windows boots normally, you can easily view services as they start. Just add the /SOS switch to the line in the Boot.ini file that starts with Windows 2000. Boot.ini doesn’t appear in Windows Explorer by default. To view it, open the root folder of the boot drive, and go to Tools | Folder Options. On the View tab, deselect the Hide Protected Operating System Files option.” This also applies to Windows XP.