[whpalmer4]

Originally Posted by jsibley

I was not able to complete a safe boot. When I restart and hold the Shift key, I get the Apple logo and spinning gear icon for several minutes...it just hangs. I tried two separate occasions, same result. For future reference, at what point do I hold the Shift key: After the "Bong"? After the Apple logo appears? When? And until when?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455 describes how to do the Safe Boot procedure. If your system hangs when doing a Safe Boot, that makes me suspicious that you might have some other problems lurking under the hood. Is this machine still under AppleCare?

Do you have this same behavior in a freshly created user account?

Another tactic to try would be to hold down the shift key when logging in. If your account is set to log in automatically, just log out and log back in, holding down the shift key when you click the login button. This disables any startup items you might have. If you still see the unwanted shortcut, then you might conclude that you've got something lodged in your preferences that is setting this up, or whatever app(s) you ran prior to checking the state of the shortcut might be at fault.

Did you ever try setting up the desired "normal" shortcut for Mail in the keyboard preferences pane?