Safe mode is a booting of Vista whereby only the barest of the bare essentials required to run the operating system are used. This means you can't, for instance, look at pictures or play music in Safe Mode, because the tools Vista needs to do those things won't be booted up. It's the bare-bones OS, stripped of all peripherals like cameras and microphones: everything except your mouse, your keyboard, your monitor and your hard drives are disabled.
So what's safe mode good for?
It's great for fixing things. For instance, since Java doesn't boot in Safe Mode, if your Java installation is infected by a virus then you can make changes to your system in Safe Mode that would normally cause system errors in your regular operating mode when you changed or deleted files.
When you boot up your computer and you see the screen with the logo of your processor, like AMD or Intel or what have you,
and before you see the Microsoft Corporation screen with the green bar with the light going left-to-right, press the "F8" key a few times. This stops the normal boot process (the one that sends you to your full OS) and sends you to a menu where you can choose how the computer boots up just this one time. The top option is Safe Mode, there's a Safe Mode With Networking (which is useful because this way a Microsoft tech can open up your computer and peek around while you sit there and follow their instructions), and other useful ways of booting.
Anyway, I just wanted to see what your log said about install errors. We don't need to do that now.
What flavius wants you to do with that
del C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\*.* is to erase the three logs that are in that folder right now. Those are old logs.
You
have to do that with the command prompt "Run As Administrator." Otherwise, it'll say you can't because you don't have access. You find the Command Prompt normally in your Start Menu, in the Accessories section. Right-click on the Command Prompt and left-click on the option "Run As Administrator" and type in what he told you.
Then when it's done, which'll be in less than a second, type
sfc /scannow. This creates a new log and it fixes any system files that are on the fritz, comparing the files you have against original Microsoft files and fixing the ones that dont' compare exactly.
This should be successful and you'll get a message saying either nothing's wrong, something was wrong and it's fixed now, or something's still wrong.
Exit out of the command prompt by typing "exit."
Next...
if you're running any 32-bit version of Vista, download and run
this.
if you're running any 64-bit version of Vista, download and run
this.
(You can tell which you're running by right-clicking on your "Computer" icon on the Start Menu or your desktop, selecting "Properties" and looking under "System" on the right. At the bottom of that little section it tells you "System type" and that's where you see either 64 or 32 bits.)
That tool will create another log besides the cbs.log, and it will be named checksur.log, and it will be in the same "c:\windows\log\cbs" folder.
And then reply with the "attach to post" of the 2 logs Flavius wants.
.