[liweilun]

Here is my issue: I turn on the PC, BIOS screen with the DELL logo displays and other hardware information. I hear one beep and the screen is replaced with a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. This screen will continue to show unless I reboot or turn off.

My PC was working fine until yesterday. It's an older DELL. No new hardware was installed recently.

After googling the problem and doing what some have suggested I am still having no luck. What I have tried so far:
- Ran XP Repair. After it reinstalls all the files and stuff it reboots and same blank screen with blinking cursor
- Checked if the little battery on the motherboard is still good. I know this as the clock is correct.
- Reset configuration data in BIOS
- Removed all cards from motherboard except graphics card
- Tried switching graphics card with another one I had and same problem.
- Changed BIOS to do full memory check. It does not complain about any memory problems.

Can someone please suggest what I can try next to help pinpoint the problem? I am still unsure it it's a hardware or OS issue.

Any help will be appreciated.

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I've had the same problem . I had an old hp pavilion cd and i had to delete the disk partion and reinstall a new one. after that i used my xp reinstall cd and it worked great (although all my files were deleted).

[ktownkatman]

I've had the same problem . I had an old hp pavilion cd and i had to delete the disk partion and reinstall a new one. after that i used my xp reinstall cd and it worked great (although all my files were deleted).

[ktownkatman]

i dont know what to do because i bet you dont have the same cd :-(

[liweilun]

In the end I may need to resort to reinstalling everything from scratch, but I'm not even sure that will help. I'm hoping someone can come up with a solution that will save my data. By the way, if I boot in recovery mode I am able to access the C: drive and see everything.

[gerryf]

ok, that's good, your partition table is ok then

boot into recovery console, and at the prompt type

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
<enter>

THIS ASSUMES YOU HAVE A SINGLE DRIVE IN YOUR SYSTEM, if you have a multiboot system with more than one drive/parition, please post back

Reboot. Fix?

If not, back to recovery console and type:

fixboot c:
<enter>

(same applies to above--this is more likely to fix the issue than the previous, but do the other first anyway since you need a good mbr before creating a new boot sector on the system drive.)

Edited by gerryf, 27 August 2005 - 12:14 PM.

[liweilun]

gerryf,

Thanks for the response.

I don't have multi-boot; however, I do have 3 hard drives. I did try the:
fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
but I get a message "The old master boot record cannot be read"

I then went ahead and tried the "fixboot c:" command. It comes back with success. Unfortunately, when I reboot I still get the blinking cursor.

Would you have any other goodies to try?

Thanks!

[gerryf]

not good

chkdsk /r

then try fixmbr again....

[ktownkatman]

Umm... You can try and take out your hard drives and put in another computer and sava all the data then copy all the files from the computer that works fine. It might work.

[liweilun]

Thanks for everyone's replies. I ended up dusting off an old HD and installing XP on it. The original drive is now a slave and I am pulling the data off of it.

Thanks.

[ktownkatman]