Computer no longer boots, black screen w/ blinking underscore

I

ideviouz

Gawd
Joined
Nov 23, 2007
Messages
818
Hi all,

Cousin's computer has decided to act up and I've never dealt with this before. His computer went to sleep while he was installing something and he didn't know how to bring it out of sleep so he just turned it off.

Attempts to turn it back on today and it won't boot. Bios loads and he can get into the bios and modify the settings to select what to boot from first (boot priority) but after that... it's just a black screen with blinking underscore (cursor?).

CD first, still same.
HD first, still same.

Not sure what happened there.. shouldn't be due to an overclock... is it because he turned it off when it was in sleep mode? So the computer has no idea what to do in this situation? Boot manager corrupted?

Anyone know of any tried and sure methods to fix this? I've tried googling it but most of the "responses" just says to read something else that doesn't have an actual answer. I saw something about fixboot but don't really understand that...

Not sure what to do if I can't boot from disc or into safe mode...

Someone able to take the time to walk me through this? Sorry and thanks in advance!
 
The 2 times I've seen this, its meant the OS (one was XP and the other was Win7) took a dump. I reinstalled it and it fixed it right up.
 
When you set the CD first, did you try booting with the OS CD in?
 
@MacLeod
I'm under the assumption that something happened to the OS too.... however he says he cannot get any device to boot (dvd or hard drive). I imagine it'll work if I just try a completely different hard drive but need him to bring it over.

@Magnus
He tried booting with the OS (Installation CD) but still black screen with cursor... it just seemed to ignore any device completely... which is kind of sad. I've had him change the boot priority in bios back and forth with no change :(

Thanks guys and keep the advice coming~ Much appreciated!
 
First, try replugging the power and data cables to the HDD. Try to boot. If no joy, reset CMOS.
 
Found this :)

To fix your mbr, boot from your windows 7 dvd, choose your language, time and keyboard input.
Click "repair computer"
Choose "command prompt"
Type: "bootsect /nt60 ALL" (without quotes )

Thanks all!
 
ideviouz said:
Hi all,

[snip]

Attempts to turn it back on today and it won't boot. Bios loads and he can get into the bios and modify the settings to select what to boot from first (boot priority) but after that... it's just a black screen with blinking underscore (cursor?).

CD first, still same.
HD first, still same.
[snip]
Click to expand...
Hate to say this, but it also possible that the hard drive has failed. :(

Can you take the drive out of this system and put it into another system to see if you can read files from this drive.
 
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