Black Screen Blinking Cursor NOT AGAIN!

[spikoman69]

Last time i had this problem, i would do a repair install and get on windows, but once i would power down and start back up, i got the black screen again. After awhile of doing this, repair install wouldnt work, and after it copied the files in the first part of the install, it would restart and go to the black screen again. I RMAed the drive and got a new one. This was 5 months ago. On the replacement harddrive, im now having the same problem. Repair install only worked once. Now i cant get the black screen to say what file is missing or corrupt even like it did before. I called seagate and they reccomended using there seatools dos bootable disk to scan my drive. Ive done so, all scans have came back with passing results of no bad sectors. So it is my windows installation. Ive solved my problem of narrowing it down to the problem of windows. So now im trying to find anyway that i can get it to work again without reformatting. Next time i am definately going to make a small partition for windows and the rest partitioned for all my files. Any suggestions on how i can get windows to run again without losing my files and installs? Becasue 1) It is a pain to backup everything onto a harddrive, then reinsall windows, move files on, reinstall all my programs and stuff 2) I have dial up only so redownloading stuff is a pain in the. When i type fixmbr in the recovery console it says WARNING backup important files before using this command. Does this mean fixing my master boot record could delete or cause all my files the become inaccessable? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[KSoD]

Go into the REcovery Console and do a fixboot and fixmbr. Doing this will not cause you to lose your data. I have done it several times this past week myself cause i keep messing up my Tri Boot system.

 

[spikoman69]

I tried this and no luck. I also tried it in my brothers computer to see if it was something besides my windows installation giving the problem. It got past the blinking cursor, but got the blue screen of death. So i decided to try his harddrive, which was working perfect in my pc, it got the blue screen on mine. I hope i didnt wreck his and it doesnt work in his now. But the wierd thing is, my harddrive gets blue screen of death on his, and still after that, on my pc it still gets only the blinking cursor. Im pretty sure im going to have to backup my data and reinstall. Only thing is, could it be my PC hardware that is damaging the files? Since my brothers harddrive also got blue screen?

 

[KSoD]

IT could be. Have you done any searches on your hardware to make sure that it is all compatible together? Some hardware doesnt work together. Like mother boards and RAM.

 

[spikoman69]

All my parts have been working good together for a while. I have made some progress in the situation. I installed windows on an old harddrive i have and it runs fine on the pc, so it cant be the pc thats messed up. Now i hooked up the bad harddrive as the slave, and when windows started it did this scandisk type thing, its repaired "orphaned" files into the directory and said something about fixing windows files. Now whenever i start it with the bad harddrive as the master harddrive, it goes past the screen, then goes to the windows screen with safe mode, safe mode with network, safe mode with command prompt, last known good configuartion and start windows normally selections. No matter what selection i make, screen goes black then just restarts the pc, and does it again.

 

[KSoD]

That means the install needs to be repaired since the windows files are most likely either corrupt or gone.

 

[spikoman69]

Ive ran multiple repair installs, all have came back to the same safeboot/start windows normal screen after its copys thes files then restarts to go into the part of the isntall that has the windows xp theme and displays progress on the left.

 

[KSoD]

Does it fully go thru the repair install without any errors? Also do you have anything plugged into the USB ports?

 

[spikoman69]

USB ports are my mouse and keyboard. Like i said before, i cant run repair install all the way without errors, because once you boot to windows cd, start repair install, then it copys neccesary files for install, the pc has to restart, and when i does this it should start up to the install but it just does what its been doing.

 

[superdave1984]

I would start by checking your RAM. You say you are on dial up, but it would be worth your time to download Memtest and run it.