10.2 has a safe boot feature, similar to Window's Safe Mode. It does the following:
- It runs fsck on startup
- It seems to LOAD a minimal set of Kernal Extensions
- It seems to run a minimal set of startup scripts.
- It does not launch your startup items
To access safe boot, hold the Shift key during startup. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone (but not before). You can let go as soon as you see then grey spinning cogs. When you are booting in safe boot, you will see "Safe Boot" on the Mac OS X startup screen.
[
Editor's note: This was covered earlier this year in
this hint, but the behavior has been improved in 10.2, so I felt it was worth mentioning again.]