[mmbundock]

Well we had a poweroutage, and the PC was on. So I went to turn it on, and all I got was a black screen and a white cursor you know...the _ blinking... And I need help FAST before my dad flips a lid! or 2.

Thanks..


mmbundock

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Hi mmbundock,

bummer dude

I hope it was ok to have the pc on. If so, it's not your fault. You cannot predict a power outage.

Just for info - is your pc connected to a surge protector?

Chances are either the motherboard fried or the hard drive was damaged. Electronic components don't like sudden shocks.

Before you tell your dad, power off the pc, then restart it. If you still get a blank screen then tell your dad what happened. If it works ok, then thank your lucky stars.

I probably won't be able to help much if the screen is still blank. Besides, the next move should be authorized by your dad.

bdlt

[bdlt]

Hi mmbundock,

bummer dude

I hope it was ok to have the pc on. If so, it's not your fault. You cannot predict a power outage.

Just for info - is your pc connected to a surge protector?

Chances are either the motherboard fried or the hard drive was damaged. Electronic components don't like sudden shocks.

Before you tell your dad, power off the pc, then restart it. If you still get a blank screen then tell your dad what happened. If it works ok, then thank your lucky stars.

I probably won't be able to help much if the screen is still blank. Besides, the next move should be authorized by your dad.

bdlt

[mmbundock]

Well, I don't think that it was...what does it look like. It was connected to a power strip, and was "grounded" I think. (thats whewn it has the 3 prong thingy right?) And I restrated like 28 times and no hope. I might try reinstalling XP pro.
If no hope is found
R.I.P to my 64.5 gigs of music. =[

[bdlt]

one way to test your hard drive is to move it to another PC with the same operating system and see if it can be accessed as a slave drive.

you may want to check with your dad before opening the PC.

[mmbundock]

Yeah, the thing is I was about to put a 40 gig into the PC thank god I didn't. Haha...yeah I MIGHT do that...or Ill just try to reinstall windows.

[bdlt]

if you want to save your music, DO NOT reinstall windows

[mmbundock]

yeah Im going to wait until I get more replies/suggestions before I do that. =]

[bdlt]

waiting - good move

if you have a new drive and eventually install xp on it, you can then install the 'bad' drive as a slave and attempt to recover your music and other valuable files.

[mmbundock]

thats a good idea! thanks! well, I hope someone replies with a good responce. I really dont feel like getting all that music/art back. I had a lot of my PS work on it. =[

[bdlt]

another good idea - let's see if anyone else has another approach to your dilema.

[mmbundock]

I can't lg in. And I don't think I can even get to the safe mode screen or to choose it. I'll go try unplug it/plug it back in.

[AitrusSkyy]

I know what hes talking about, when you boot up, you see the BIOS logo, then you simply see a white blinking cursor, which means the system cant load...

If you know about opening your pc, then you can try the following. First touch your pcs outer case to remove your static, open case, remove parallel cable from hd, turn on pc, let it start up, it should say primary disk not detected or some odd, turn off the pc, take out your ram, put it back in, reconnect HD and see if it works...

I know that all sounds silly, but believe it or not hds and bios and motherboards can be whack. Ive seen everything from pcs not starting cause ram needed to be taken out and put back in to computers and hard drives responding to physical abuse. (literally, my best friends pc use to freeze up and he would backhand it and it would start working again..., we checked for lose cables, ram, hd connection, and never figured it out, but it made me laugh)

So try doing what I said if you know how, possibly you can reset your ram and cable connection to the HD, sometimes information just gets jammed somehow.

If not, well sadly to say in most cases when you get the white blinking curson it means 1 of 3 things....

1 something is jammed needs to be reset
2 your hd is bad now/damaged and/or simply needs to be formatted
3 the MBR (master boot record) got corrupt and now your windows simply wont startup...


I can tell you how to fix the MBR if you like, but try what I mentioned first.

[mmbundock]

Ok, Ill go do that. I have opened up my computer before and installed a GFX card and thats about it. I also installed some RAM, so I think I can do this.


Ok I did that and the same thing happened. I got the error that you said I should get. I took the RAM out (when it was off obviously) and put it back in. Unfortunally, it didn't work.


So how would I fix MBR? I've done it before, but I didn't think I woul dhave to use it again.

Edited by mmbundock, 11 August 2006 - 09:45 AM.

[AitrusSkyy]

You find your windows XP cd ( sorry for delayed response, im at work )...

Boot to the windows xp cd by hittin any key when it asks you to ( you may have to enable booting to cdrom through the bios )

when it loads you will see 3 different recovery things

#1 while its loading drivers and stuff before it asks you if you want to install, it says HIT R to use recovery, and tries to recover from disks THIS IS NOT THE OPTION YOU WANT.

#2 YOU want to use the recovery CONSOL, which is the second recovery option you should have when you see the

IF YOU WANT TO INSTALL WINDOWS NOW HIT ENTER< IF YOU WANT TO TRY RESTORING USING THE RECOVERY CONSOLE HIT R...

go ahead and hit R

itll load to a dos like screen. Itll ask you what windows installation you want to work with, there should only be 1, and choose option 1...

if you had a password on it, then enter the pass if it asks you.

once you see that you are able to type something in, simply type in...

fix mbr or fixmbr.

Say yes, let it do it, and see if it fixed it...

If you cant even see the windows instalation to fix the mbr though, you will have to format. It is also possible you could instead of formatting try to recover the partition which may also be lost or undefined in the drive. Either way, there is no way to get your data off even by putting it in another computer if it has no partition, and to make a partition may mean losing everything. but I know a program that has a 90% chance of making and editing partitions without losing data at all...

Edited by AitrusSkyy, 11 August 2006 - 01:18 PM.