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XP Won't boot, flashing white dash

Started by ARK24 , Oct 22 2010 02:15 PM

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#1
ARK24

Posted 22 October 2010 - 02:15 PM

Member

Member
19 posts

XP Home machine won't boot. It gets past the POST then just shows a black screen with a flashing white dash in the upper left corner. I've tried booting up after unplugging the other two drives in the machine (both DVD drives) but that didn't help. I took the HDD out and ran a scan on it with avast to remove some threats, I also ran chkdsk on it, but that didn't help. I tried to do a repair install using the XP Home CD, after it finished copying the files it automatically restarted but it still can't load windows like it's supposed to, just the flashing white dash. I can get into BIOS setup, but I can't start up in safe mode or last know good configuration. How do I get past this white flashing dash and load up XP? Thanks!\

Edit: I've tried using Testdisk to fix the MBR, but it just tell me the boot sector is okay. Then why can't I boot up into XP?

Edited by ARK24, 22 October 2010 - 03:01 PM.

#2
SRX660

Posted 23 October 2010 - 07:58 AM

motto - Just get-er-done

Technician
4,345 posts

I had a customer computer with a similar problem. I got to the point where i reformatted the drive and reinstalled XP(after saving all the data i could off the drive) and it still came up with a flashing cursor in the corner. I ended up switching to another drive for the "C" drive and used the old drive for a "E" data drive. As a "E" drive it works just fine and i can see the windows folder with the XP files in it. I tried switching back to the old drive but the problem remained. The only thing i can think of is some kind of rootware that has messed up the drive. Customers happy, so i'm happy.

SRX660