Blinking cursor at failed boot

On 01/18/2014 02:34 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 1/18/2014 3:41 PM, Paul wrote:

If Linux is still booting, you can also check which partition has
the boot flag set, from there.

I think Linux was killed off from booting when he did fixmbr and
fixboot. Although later he repaired it and Linux still loads.

Indeed I did; fortunately it is just as easy to install grub as it is to
run fixmbr; you just run "grub-install /dev/sda" from a linux command
line and it writes to the MBR (then of course you need to generate a
config file with "grub-mkconfig -o /boob/grub/grub.cfg).

I keep a copy of rescatux on a thumb drive so I can always boot into a
system, Windows or Linux, when the loader is funny. It did not,
however, enable to boot into Windows this time, just taking me to the
blinking cursor, so I'm pretty confident the problem is on the Windows
side of the loader.

It isn't clear why Windows won't boot. All we know there is a flashing
cursor and nothing else when trying to boot Windows. I automatically
assume and focus on that it can't find Windows at all. Although this
isn't a sure thing or anything, but that is the first thing that I would
assume. But we don't know this for sure.

We also know that the BIOS can see the hard drive and the computer can
boot from an optical drive. And the boot OS from the optical drive can
see and change things on the hard drive (even on the Windows partition).

Philo immediately jumped on a problem with one of the Windows boot
files. I shied away from that idea based on the flashing cursor. As if
Windows has any chance to load and you just end up with a hanging
flashing cursor isn't usually one of them. Usually it pops up an error
about something. Usually about some file that may not really have
anything to do with it.

Yes; I've seen the "NTLDR missing or corrupt" message before, which
gives you a pretty good idea of where to start. Damn blinking cursor.

Jon

On 01/18/2014 06:55 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:


snip
Ben

If Linux is still booting, you can also check which partition has
the boot flag set, from there.

GRUB doesn't use the boot flag and doesn't need it.
While Windows does.

The puzzling part would be, why would a boot flag "go away" ?
What would have cleared it ?

Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot column).

Jon




OK one more thing to try from the repair console


BOOTCFG /REBUILD

On 1/18/2014 7:11 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
Yes; I've seen the "NTLDR missing or corrupt" message before, which
gives you a pretty good idea of where to start. Damn blinking cursor.

Wow that changes a lot for me. The error "NTLDR missing or corrupt" may
have nothing to do with ntldr at all. But I am like now 90% sure that it
sees the Windows partition and trying to boot from it.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5 GHz - 2GB RAM
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2

On 1/18/2014 7:46 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 1/18/2014 7:11 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
Yes; I've seen the "NTLDR missing or corrupt" message before, which
gives you a pretty good idea of where to start. Damn blinking cursor.

Wow that changes a lot for me. The error "NTLDR missing or corrupt" may
have nothing to do with ntldr at all. But I am like now 90% sure that it
sees the Windows partition and trying to boot from it.

You know this is something that is a super long shot. But delete the
pagefile.sys file and retry. I figure success is like less than like
0.001% chance that it will help, but it is easy to try and won't hurt
anything.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5 GHz - 2GB RAM
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2

philo wrote:
On 01/18/2014 06:55 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:


snip
Ben

If Linux is still booting, you can also check which partition has
the boot flag set, from there.

GRUB doesn't use the boot flag and doesn't need it.
While Windows does.

The puzzling part would be, why would a boot flag "go away" ?
What would have cleared it ?

Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot column).

Jon




OK one more thing to try from the repair console


BOOTCFG /REBUILD

Or open boot.ini in a Linux text editor, and see whether it
looks reasonable.

The BIOS has a bad habit of renumbering disks, during
BIOS hardware detection. There is a difference sometimes,
between setting the boot order in the BIOS (save and exit),
versus using the popup boot menu. On my backup machine,
that was preventing Windows from booting, just because
two additional SATA drives happened to be plugged in at
the time.

My primary computer doesn't have that problem, and WinXP
on there always behaves. Because the BIOS doesn't have
quite as many curve balls in it.

Paul

On 1/18/2014 8:26 PM, Paul wrote:
philo wrote:
On 01/18/2014 06:55 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:


snip
Ben

If Linux is still booting, you can also check which partition has
the boot flag set, from there.

GRUB doesn't use the boot flag and doesn't need it.
While Windows does.

The puzzling part would be, why would a boot flag "go away" ?
What would have cleared it ?

Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot
column).

OK one more thing to try from the repair console

BOOTCFG /REBUILD

Or open boot.ini in a Linux text editor, and see whether it
looks reasonable.

The BIOS has a bad habit of renumbering disks, during
BIOS hardware detection. There is a difference sometimes,
between setting the boot order in the BIOS (save and exit),
versus using the popup boot menu. On my backup machine,
that was preventing Windows from booting, just because
two additional SATA drives happened to be plugged in at
the time.

My primary computer doesn't have that problem, and WinXP
on there always behaves. Because the BIOS doesn't have
quite as many curve balls in it.

We tried that already and no joy. Well changing the partition in
boot.ini anyway. Jon never changed disk in boot.ini as far as I know
(although the drive is set at master and I didn't think that was the
problem). Although now knowing about that NTLDR error, I don't think
boot.ini has anything to do with the problem.

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 ('09 era) - Thunderbird v12
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5 GHz - 2GB RAM
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2

On 01/18/2014 06:20 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 1/18/2014 7:46 PM, BillW50 wrote:
On 1/18/2014 7:11 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
Yes; I've seen the "NTLDR missing or corrupt" message before, which
gives you a pretty good idea of where to start. Damn blinking cursor.

Wow that changes a lot for me. The error "NTLDR missing or corrupt" may
have nothing to do with ntldr at all. But I am like now 90% sure that it
sees the Windows partition and trying to boot from it.

You know this is something that is a super long shot. But delete the
pagefile.sys file and retry. I figure success is like less than like
0.001% chance that it will help, but it is easy to try and won't hurt
anything.

Sorry Bill, I didn't phrase that correctly. I meant to say that I have
seen that message before in the past with other systems I have worked
on; I have not seen that message on this system. I have never had any
trouble with it, other than now.

I did move in to get rid of the pagefile, but there wasn't one (which
struck me as odd). Usually a missing pagefile will throw up a message
during logon, but of course I'm not getting that far.

I did find the hiberfil.sys file, which I backed up and deleted, but
still no joy.

Jon

On 01/18/2014 05:37 PM, philo wrote:
On 01/18/2014 06:55 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:


snip
Ben

If Linux is still booting, you can also check which partition has
the boot flag set, from there.

GRUB doesn't use the boot flag and doesn't need it.
While Windows does.

The puzzling part would be, why would a boot flag "go away" ?
What would have cleared it ?

Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot column).


OK one more thing to try from the repair console


BOOTCFG /REBUILD

Thanks philo, I gave that a whirl, and it added a line in boot.ini, but
still no boot.

Jon

Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/18/2014 05:37 PM, philo wrote:
On 01/18/2014 06:55 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
snip
Ben
If Linux is still booting, you can also check which partition has
the boot flag set, from there.

GRUB doesn't use the boot flag and doesn't need it.
While Windows does.

The puzzling part would be, why would a boot flag "go away" ?
What would have cleared it ?
Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot column).

OK one more thing to try from the repair console


BOOTCFG /REBUILD

Thanks philo, I gave that a whirl, and it added a line in boot.ini, but
still no boot.

Jon


A Googling, suggests removing any extraneous USB devices.
For example, some USB printers have a USB SD card reader,
and a computer BIOS may interpret that as a boot device
and become confused.

Paul

On 01/18/2014 10:26 PM, Paul wrote:

A Googling, suggests removing any extraneous USB devices.
For example, some USB printers have a USB SD card reader,
and a computer BIOS may interpret that as a boot device
and become confused.

Thanks Paul, I have nothing extraneous connected to the laptop. Didn't
enable anything in the BIOS, either.

Jon

Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/18/2014 10:26 PM, Paul wrote:
A Googling, suggests removing any extraneous USB devices.
For example, some USB printers have a USB SD card reader,
and a computer BIOS may interpret that as a boot device
and become confused.

Thanks Paul, I have nothing extraneous connected to the laptop. Didn't
enable anything in the BIOS, either.

Jon


"Computer stops responding with a black screen when you start Windows XP"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314503

Here's another.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/foru...inking-cursor/

"Finally, out of my own frusteration, I booted the computer to
Hirem's Boot CD and used it's "Fix NTLDR Is Missing" tool using
the first option out of 10 possible fixes and wham! Boots Windows
first try. However, upon restart of the customer's computer I am
again greeted with the black screen and a blinking cursor. I must
use Hirem's Boot CD to boot Windows each time."

Weird. I wonder if a pagefile problem could throw it off early
in the boot process ?

Another web page suggests copying the files from a WinXP installer CD.

COPY D:\I386\NTLDR C:\
COPY D:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\
Remove the Windows XP CD from the drive and restart the computer.

HTH,
Paul

On 01/18/2014 11:26 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
X
snip

l, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot column).


OK one more thing to try from the repair console


BOOTCFG /REBUILD

Thanks philo, I gave that a whirl, and it added a line in boot.ini, but
still no boot.

Jon



OK , I've lost track of everything you tried but I've overlooked
something . I'd try running chkdsk /r from the repair console.


If you have already tried that there is one other thing I've done to fix
a non-booting system.

I use a Win7pe boot cd which boots to a win7 environment
then run chkdsk /f on the drive


Makes no sense really but I've seen that fix the system when chkdsk /r
from the console did not.

In message , Jon Danniken
writes:
[]
Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot column).

Jon

Would (backing up some files and then) installing something simple and
bootable _on that partition_ eliminate some possible scenarios? (I was
going to say a DOS boot, but the partition is I'm guessing NTFS, and I
don't think DOS will run from that.) If you can do this, and it does
boot, then it would tie the problem down to being definitely something
about the Windows XP system, rather than any other partition/config or
whatever.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -Albert Einstein

In message , Jon Danniken
writes:
On 01/18/2014 10:26 PM, Paul wrote:

A Googling, suggests removing any extraneous USB devices.
For example, some USB printers have a USB SD card reader,
and a computer BIOS may interpret that as a boot device
and become confused.

Thanks Paul, I have nothing extraneous connected to the laptop. Didn't
enable anything in the BIOS, either.

Jon

If it's a laptop, it's quite likely that some of the internal hardware
is - either in reality or at least as far as the processor is concerned
- connected via USB; the webcam quite often is, for example.

(Though that's unlikely to be the cause of the problem as that
hardware's been there throughout.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -Albert Einstein

In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
In message , Jon Danniken
writes:
[]
Thanks Paul, and Ben. Linux (fdisk -l) is indeed showing the WinXP
partition as the boot partition (it has the asterisk in the Boot
column). Jon

Would (backing up some files and then) installing something simple and
bootable _on that partition_ eliminate some possible scenarios? (I was
going to say a DOS boot, but the partition is I'm guessing NTFS, and I
don't think DOS will run from that.) If you can do this, and it does
boot, then it would tie the problem down to being definitely something
about the Windows XP system, rather than any other partition/config or
whatever.

How about installing the Recovery Console on the hard drive? It installs
right in the Windows boot partition. And it sets up either booting the
Recovery Console or XP.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...overy-console/

--
Bill
Motion Computing LE1700 Tablet ('09 era) - OE-QuoteFix v1.19.2
Centrino Core2 Duo L7400 1.5GHz - 2GB RAM
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 SP2