Blinking cursor at failed boot

In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
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.)

Yes this is true. My EeePC netbooks has two USB devices built in. The
cam and the SD card slot. I can't think of a reason the SD card reader
was ever a problem for anything. Although there are conditions where the
cam is a problem. And I believe it gets in the way when you install an
OS. As OS like Windows Setup I guess switches all USB devices down to
v1.1 speeds by default when you start an install. And the cam can't run
at 1.1 speeds and locks up the system. So the trick is disabling the cam
through the BIOS Setup. Then you can toggle it back on later after it is
installed.

--
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

On 01/19/2014 12:53 AM, Paul wrote:

"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.

Thanks Paul. I've wanted a Hiren for awhile, so I burned one; sure
enough, it was able to boot into WinXP without any trouble whatsoever,
just using the first option (not the "fix ntldr" option). Without
using Hiren, though, it doesn't boot.

Once it boots with Hiren pagefile.sys is rebuilt, and it persists after
shut down.

I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.


Jon

On 01/19/2014 03:20 AM, philo wrote:


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.

Thanks philo. I did try a "chkdsk /r" yesterday, and /f isn't available
with the XP repair console (it is implied, however).

I don't have a Win7PE disk made up, but I'll put that on the plate.

Jon

On 01/19/2014 08:37 AM, BillW50 wrote:
In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
In message , Jon Danniken

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/

Thanks John and Bill. I was able to boot the system with Hiron's boot
disk, and I went through the procedure to install the recovery console
to the C:\ partision.

Unfortunately, as it is referenced through boot.ini, which I am unable
to get to, I don't even get to that option.

Oddly enough, when I boot with Hiron, I can see the line to boot into
the recovery console I created, but selecting it does nothing but the
blinking cursor. Hiron is, however, able to boot into the system using
the "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" line, however.

Jon

On 01/19/2014 04:37 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/19/2014 03:20 AM, philo wrote:


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.

Thanks philo. I did try a "chkdsk /r" yesterday, and /f isn't available
with the XP repair console (it is implied, however).

I don't have a Win7PE disk made up, but I'll put that on the plate.

Jon





I have not investigated everything in the Hirens CD

it may even have such a utility.


Also, supposedly gparted has a repair capability
The one on my machine does not...but I've seen some posts referencing it.

On 01/19/2014 02:56 PM, philo wrote:

I have not investigated everything in the Hirens CD

it may even have such a utility.


Also, supposedly gparted has a repair capability
The one on my machine does not...but I've seen some posts referencing it.

Aye, gparted has a fix option, and I actually tried that the other day
when this started.

Jon

On 01/19/2014 02:25 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:

I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.

Just for fun I deleted ntldr and rebooted. I didn't get the "NTLDR
Missing or Corrupt" message, so whatever is happening isn't getting that
far in the process.

Jon

In ,
Jon Danniken typed:
On 01/19/2014 08:37 AM, BillW50 wrote:
In ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) typed:
In message , Jon Danniken

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/

Thanks John and Bill. I was able to boot the system with Hiron's boot
disk, and I went through the procedure to install the recovery console
to the C:\ partision.

Unfortunately, as it is referenced through boot.ini, which I am unable
to get to, I don't even get to that option.

Oddly enough, when I boot with Hiron, I can see the line to boot into
the recovery console I created, but selecting it does nothing but the
blinking cursor. Hiron is, however, able to boot into the system
using the "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" line, however.

Using Hirem's Boot CD, you can edit the boot.ini file within Windows
under Control Panel - Systems - and Advanced tab. Or you can do this
manually. Instead of hitting the F8 key to pop up the menu on a
perfectly working XP system, you can tell boot.ini to pop it up there
automatically. I forget what the line looks like though. Maybe it is
this one.

timeout=30

An example where it goes is like this:

boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windo ws XP Professional"
/fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional"
/fastdetect

This is an example of booting either XP or 2000. The menu will stay
there in this example for 30 seconds waiting for the user to select one.
If 30 seconds passes, the default one will load.

--
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

On 01/19/2014 05:37 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/19/2014 02:25 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:

I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.

Just for fun I deleted ntldr and rebooted. I didn't get the "NTLDR
Missing or Corrupt" message, so whatever is happening isn't getting that
far in the process.

Jon




If the drive was totally blank you'd get an error message such as "non
system disk".



I beleive the first file to load would be NTLDR so if it's missing you
will of course get the "NTLDR missing" message.


So it looks like the problem is in the MBR


I found some MBR tools here, they may be useful but I've never tried them.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/5-free-to...ot-record-mbr/

Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/19/2014 02:25 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.

Just for fun I deleted ntldr and rebooted. I didn't get the "NTLDR
Missing or Corrupt" message, so whatever is happening isn't getting that
far in the process.

Jon


Interesting.

I was going to suggest this, but I guess not. As you'd
proved it's not going to help.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595

The idea is, you use the Windows installer CD, go to i386 and
get a copy of NTLDR and NTDETECT.com and copy those to a floppy.
Then, I went to the existing C: drive and copied boot.ini from
C: to the floppy, a total of 3 files. Note - before you object,
the usage of a floppy, is part of an imaging trick - this floppy
will *not* be offered to the broken computer.

Then, I used this.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd

( http://www.chrysocome.net/downloads/dd-0.6beta3.zip )

Then, make an image of the floppy. This is a sector by
sector image. It copies every sector on the floppy.
DD has some bugs in its "end-of-device" check, but in
this case, it knows where the end of the floppy is.

dd if=\\?\Device\Floppy0 of=bootxp.dd bs=512

The resulting file should be 1,474,560 bytes (2880 sectors).
So now I have an image of a FAT12 floppy, with three files on
it, stored in a 1,474,560 byte file.

Next, I transfer that to my 1GB Kingston USB flash.

dd if=bootxp.dd of=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 bs=32768 count=45

which will transfer the floppy image to a USB stick. The larger the
block size parameter the better, as long as it's a power_of_two. So 32768
is as close as I can get to the larger USB flash stick storage size.

Note, the files that were already on the USB stick, I didn't lose them,
because I backed them up.

dd if=\\?\Device\Harddisk2\Partition0 of=savethefiles.dd bs=262144 count=3838

The dimensions of devices can be determine by using this command,
as described on the program author's web site.

dd --list

and knowing that "Partition0" represents the whole device as a block device.
That's where I get the information that my USB stick is 1,006,108,672 bytes.
And know that 262144 * 3838, copies the entire USB stick.

I can reverse the dd transfer, and put the image of what was on there, back.

*******

OK, I did two boot tests. I booted the floppy with NTLDR, NTDETECT.com
and boot.ini, and it presented the OS boot choice menu (WinXP boot manager).
So that worked. That means the floppy bootstrapped me into WinXP, and
the WinXP boot manager took over. The boot.ini ARC path was important
to that process selecting the correct disk. I have two disks, and WinXP
is on only one of the disks. The floppy targeted the correct disk.

Next, I used the popup boot and selected the USB flash stick. And the same
thing happened, it booted to the WinXP boot manager, and WinXP booted. So the
Microsoft recipe works :-)

The reason the image transfer using "dd" is needed, is to get around the
USB flash stick formatting issue. The format on the floppy is likely
something like FAT12 or FAT16. You can't expect to take a huge USB flash
stick, and convince Windows to format it FAT12. By imaging a floppy diskette,
file system and all, and transplanting it onto the USB key, that is part of
what makes this work. The floppy is used as an intermediate "cheating" step.

The other part, is certain "emulation" modes the BIOS has. It treats USB
devices according to size in some cases. Some BIOS even know when a USB ZIP
drive is connected to the computer, and do something different internally
for those. So there's no guarantee that my experience would have worked
for you. Some older BIOS, just don't have good working USB boot options.

*******

Is the file system on that disk, mountable from Linux ? That would
tell you the file system header is at least partially OK. Linux
may not check everything in there for consistency. I would have
thought CHKDSK run from some Windows environment (recovery console),
should also have been looking at that. Windows probably wouldn't have
mounted the partition, if it didn't recognize it. So right away,
that suggests the file system header (bytes at the very beginning
of the partition) are OK.

In Linux, you can do

sudo disktype /dev/sda

to get a rundown of what Linux thinks is on the disk in terms of
file systems. I expect GParted would display the information
as well. I like disktype because it's a small (optional) tool
which is handy when something is broken.

http://disktype.sourceforge.net/

With enough fiddling, you can even get Package Manager and
a network connection on a LiveCD, to give you a copy of the
binary of that. Few distros come with that as standard. You
have to go into the Package Manager, turn on all the Repositories,
reload, then search for disktype, all to get the tiny executable.

I don't really know where to go next. You did a fixboot (update
the boot sector in the C: partition, in the file system header
area) as well as fixmbr (fix the 440 bytes in the MBR sector 0).
You shouldn't really need to do a fixboot, unless the partition
had been formatted and the file system header overwritten by
a formatter. I know this, because I copy the files off my
WinXP occasionally, format C:, and copy the files back. And
the OS won't boot, unless that is followed by a fixboot. Otherwise,
you probably wouldn't (normally) need it.

So that's yet another option for you (if you're bored). Copy
all the files off C:. Reformat C:. Copy all the files back.
Do a fixboot. Make sure NTLDR, NTDETECT.com and boot.ini
are present. And try booting. That's a lot of work, and
when I do that process, I dual boot Win2K and do the file
copying step from there. So it's not something you do with
only one OS present. While you can do things like run an
NTBACKUP plugin from BartPE and other exotic things, that's
really reserved for when you have a running system and
need a hobby :-)

Paul

philo wrote:
On 01/19/2014 05:37 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/19/2014 02:25 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:

I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.

Just for fun I deleted ntldr and rebooted. I didn't get the "NTLDR
Missing or Corrupt" message, so whatever is happening isn't getting that
far in the process.

Jon




If the drive was totally blank you'd get an error message such as "non
system disk".



I beleive the first file to load would be NTLDR so if it's missing you
will of course get the "NTLDR missing" message.


So it looks like the problem is in the MBR


I found some MBR tools here, they may be useful but I've never tried them.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/5-free-to...ot-record-mbr/


From Linux, you can pull the MBR with something like

dd if=/dev/sda of=mymbr.dd bs=512 count=1

and then use hd or hexdump (with the -C option being
commonly used for canonical mode), to display the 512 bytes.
Then compare the MBR, to MBRs documented on the web.

( http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/index.html )

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

That page says the MBR has:

0120 32 E4 8A 56 00 CD 13 EB D6 61 F9 C3 49 6E 76 61 2..V.....a..Inva
0130 6C 69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61 lid partition ta
0140 62 6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E ble.Error loadin
0150 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 g operating syst
0160 65 6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 em.Missing opera
0170 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 00 00 00 00 ting system.....

and "fixmbr" is what fixes that one.

No mention of NTLDR.

The partition boot sector is inside the C: partition itself. Not sector 0.
This is the part that "fixboot" fixes.

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/NTFSBR.htm

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
7D83 0D 0A 41 20 64 69 73 6B 20 72 65 61 64 ..A disk read
7D90 20 65 72 72 6F 72 20 6F 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 error occurred.
7DA0 0D 0A 4E 54 4C 44 52 20 69 73 20 6D 69 73 73 69 ..NTLDR is missi
7DB0 6E 67 00 0D 0A 4E 54 4C 44 52 20 69 73 20 63 6F ng...NTLDR is co
7DC0 6D 70 72 65 73 73 65 64 00 0D 0A 50 72 65 73 73 mpressed...Press
7DD0 20 43 74 72 6C 2B 41 6C 74 2B 44 65 6C 20 74 6F Ctrl+Alt+Del to
7DE0 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0D 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 restart........
7DF0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 83 A0 B3 C9 00 00 55 AA ..............U.

Paul

On 01/19/2014 07:22 PM, Paul wrote:
philo wrote:
On 01/19/2014 05:37 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/19/2014 02:25 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:

I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy
drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.

Just for fun I deleted ntldr and rebooted. I didn't get the "NTLDR
Missing or Corrupt" message, so whatever is happening isn't getting that
far in the process.

Jon




If the drive was totally blank you'd get an error message such as "non
system disk".



I beleive the first file to load would be NTLDR so if it's missing you
will of course get the "NTLDR missing" message.


So it looks like the problem is in the MBR


I found some MBR tools here, they may be useful but I've never tried
them.

http://www.raymond.cc/blog/5-free-to...ot-record-mbr/


From Linux, you can pull the MBR with something like

dd if=/dev/sda of=mymbr.dd bs=512 count=1

and then use hd or hexdump (with the -C option being
commonly used for canonical mode), to display the 512 bytes.
Then compare the MBR, to MBRs documented on the web.

( http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/index.html )

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/Win2kmbr.htm

That page says the MBR has:

0120 32 E4 8A 56 00 CD 13 EB D6 61 F9 C3 49 6E 76 61 2..V.....a..Inva
0130 6C 69 64 20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69 6F 6E 20 74 61 lid partition ta
0140 62 6C 65 00 45 72 72 6F 72 20 6C 6F 61 64 69 6E ble.Error loadin
0150 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 g operating syst
0160 65 6D 00 4D 69 73 73 69 6E 67 20 6F 70 65 72 61 em.Missing opera
0170 74 69 6E 67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6D 00 00 00 00 00 ting system.....

and "fixmbr" is what fixes that one.

No mention of NTLDR.

The partition boot sector is inside the C: partition itself. Not sector 0.
This is the part that "fixboot" fixes.

http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/NTFSBR.htm

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
7D83 0D 0A 41 20 64 69 73 6B 20 72 65 61 64 ..A disk read
7D90 20 65 72 72 6F 72 20 6F 63 63 75 72 72 65 64 00 error occurred.
7DA0 0D 0A 4E 54 4C 44 52 20 69 73 20 6D 69 73 73 69 ..NTLDR is missi
7DB0 6E 67 00 0D 0A 4E 54 4C 44 52 20 69 73 20 63 6F ng...NTLDR is co
7DC0 6D 70 72 65 73 73 65 64 00 0D 0A 50 72 65 73 73 mpressed...Press
7DD0 20 43 74 72 6C 2B 41 6C 74 2B 44 65 6C 20 74 6F Ctrl+Alt+Del to
7DE0 20 72 65 73 74 61 72 74 0D 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 restart........
7DF0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 83 A0 B3 C9 00 00 55 AA ..............U.

Paul




Yes, I have even fixed XP MBRs with a win98 boot floppy by using
fdisk /mbr

Worked fine. There were a few people at the time I did it who carefully
explained that it could not work because XP is on an NTFS partition...
and I never could convince them I was rewriting the MBR only

On 01/19/2014 05:07 PM, Jon Danniken wrote:
On 01/19/2014 02:56 PM, philo wrote:

I have not investigated everything in the Hirens CD

it may even have such a utility.


Also, supposedly gparted has a repair capability
The one on my machine does not...but I've seen some posts referencing it.

Aye, gparted has a fix option, and I actually tried that the other day
when this started.

Jon




I ran some tests and renamed the system "boot" files to see what would
happen.


1) Renaming "ntldr" gave the expected message about ntldr being missing.

2) Renaming ntdetect.com , the system just went into a reboot.

3) Renaming boot.ini I got a message that boot.ini was mis-configured
and then to my surprise Windows loaded anyway.



So that further leaves me to believe its an MBR problem.


If the disk was blank (having no MBR) you'd get the "non-system disk" error


One other thing though...have you made /any/ changes in the BIOS?

I have noticed that from machine to machine there are differences
/sometimes/ in how exactly the BIOS "hands off" to the MBR

If I put an XP hard drive in another machine one would usually see the
system start to load and then go into a BSOD (or once in a while
actually boot to Windows)

However once in a while I just observe the blinking cursor.

"Jon Danniken" wrote in message ...
On 01/19/2014 12:53 AM, Paul wrote:
"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.
Thanks Paul. I've wanted a Hiren for awhile, so I burned one; sure
enough, it was able to boot into WinXP without any trouble whatsoever,
just using the first option (not the "fix ntldr" option). Without
using Hiren, though, it doesn't boot.
Once it boots with Hiren pagefile.sys is rebuilt, and it persists after
shut down.
I did try changing out ntldr and ntdetect, but again no dice. The MS
site suggested making a boot floppy, but I don't have a USB floppy drive
(yet), nor any floppy drives on this one.

Start XP, click "Start", "Run", type "diskmgmt.msc" into the "Open" box and click "OK".
Right-click the "C:" drive in the top window and see if "Mark partition as active" is available.
If so, select it. Also, removing Grub may actually be a three step process, fixboot, fixmbr
and then fixboot again.

http://www.wikihow.com/Uninstall-the...-With-an-XP-CD

Ben

On 01/20/2014 07:26 AM, Ben Myers wrote:



snip

Start XP, click "Start", "Run", type "diskmgmt.msc" into the "Open" box and click "OK".
Right-click the "C:" drive in the top window and see if "Mark partition as active" is available.
If so, select it. Also, removing Grub may actually be a three step process, fixboot, fixmbr
and then fixboot again.

http://www.wikihow.com/Uninstall-the...-With-an-XP-CD

Ben




I think he already established the partition is active


but to follow your "three step" process may do the trick