[Bad4dayz]

Hi All.

I need some help. I have read the discussion groups on this issue, and tried everything that was outlined in previous threads, and i still have the problem.

I have an old Dell Latitude D610 with a 2 year old HD I have add this "XP won't boot. blinking cursor with blank screen, cursor just blinks in top left hand corner." three times in the past 8 months, and I have rebuilt the systems from scratch everytime... very painful.

Last night, I shut my systems off, and pooooofff... "Blinking cursor with blank screen, cursor just blinks in top left hand corner.".

Today I tried fixmbr from the XP Boot CD... nothing changed.
I tried Fixboot ... again no change
I tried other options outined in this URL - http://articles.tech...11-6031733.html
and still nothing changed I'm still getting a blinking cursor.

I am completing a chkdrk /r it is presently at 70% and it has been over 3 hours.

I know my information is on the drive, I just don't know why this is happening... 3 times in the past 8 months.

Yes I have a AV installed, and the system was working perfectly fine yesterday, I turned it on thismorning and poooofff... "cursor in corner"

I can't believe I have to rebuild this again.

I'm now at 72% on the chkdsk...

Any suggestions...

Oh, as and FYI... I was an Systems Engineer for Dell in the 90's and there is a ton of things I can do to a systems, but this has me stumped...

I have not replaced any hardware other that drive 2 years ago, the RAM is DDR2 (2G)and function properly after two different RAM test. Again, it's a notebook, and I haven't installed any hardware or software (other than OS Updates) in months... It's a very standard system...

I read about "PUPPY" but I'm not Linux friendly, still reading how to (and not to) install this program.

Your assistance would be greatly appriecated.

Thanks

[Advertisements]

More than likely your hard drive is slowly going bad. It is losing sectors fast enough that you have needed to repair it. Everytime you reinstall windows, when it finds bad sectors it ignores them and continues using the good sectors. It seems now that you have had a sector go bad where the MBR is located. I think it's time to replace the drive.

SRX660

[SRX660]

More than likely your hard drive is slowly going bad. It is losing sectors fast enough that you have needed to repair it. Everytime you reinstall windows, when it finds bad sectors it ignores them and continues using the good sectors. It seems now that you have had a sector go bad where the MBR is located. I think it's time to replace the drive.

SRX660

[Bad4dayz]

I'm inclined to agree;
I will boot to my external drive for the next few weeks.
Get a new drive and rebuild.

Thanks

[Bad4dayz]

Just submitted an RMA to WD... Should have a new drive in a few days... it was still under Warranty.
They don't build them like they use too...

[Kachun]

I saw this subject (XP won boot with blinking cursor) came up quite a few times and no one seemed to mention about that could be caused by having a NTFS partition > 137G while the BIOS did not support LBA48.

Since you have a D610 and I notice that you said you had changed the hard drive. If your hard drive is > 137G, XP SP1+ would allow you to create an partition >137G and install without complain. However, when some of its boot data (most likely the swap file) pushed pass 137G, your PC would not boot any more. The pre D610 A06 BIOS definitely do not support LBA48 and there are contradict info whether A06 BIOS does, so your best bet is to keep your partition size under 137G, and use multiple partitions.

[JaxxUsog]

I've noticed a lot of responses here that indicate a bad hard drive, and that replacing it would do the trick. However, I have the same problem with a D610. While the Windows XP logo flashes during boot up, only two options are available: F2 (Setup) and F12 (Boot). Hitting any of the those keys, or letting the boot sequence go forward, yeilds the same result for me: black screen with a blinking cursos in the left hand corner. I am unable to get any further than this....

However, I have two D610s, and I was able to pull out the supposed "bad" hard drive, move it to the second D610, and it boots up fine. Same battery, same power cord, same BIOS settings. The only difference is that the 1st D610 had updates downloaded from Adobe (info supplied from my wife, so I'm not sure how reliable it is) before the "crash".

I'm about to try all of the check disk and MBR options I can, but I suspect a change in the CMOS setting or BIOS settings that are independent of the hard drive, since the hard drive works in the 2nd D610 just fine. I think there may either have been some registry malfuntion, CMOS setting change, or a possible virus. I did see something on another post where a virus hijack occured and the CMOS settings were changed, only I didn't see how those issues were resolved.