[N/A] Help with PC boot

Sam D

Sam D

Pattern Altitude
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Sam D
Alright, I haven't posted much of anything here but have lurked for quite a while and need some help -- so, I'm relying on the groups generosity! :D As well as the fountain of this type of knowledge which I've seen.

In short, my Dell desktop won't boot. Gets past the splash screen and goes to a blank screen with a blinking cursor and that's it. Same result if I hit F2 (boot menu, I believe) or F12 (setup?).

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
Sam Doolittle said:
Alright, I haven't posted much of anything here but have lurked for quite a while and need some help -- so, I'm relying on the groups generosity! :D As well as the fountain of this type of knowledge which I've seen.

In short, my Dell desktop won't boot. Gets past the splash screen and goes to a blank screen with a blinking cursor and that's it. Same result if I hit F2 (boot menu, I believe) or F12 (setup?).

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Click to expand...


Sounds like you've lost your operating system due to a corrupt or missing file. Reinstall, (Windows) choose: "repair missing or corrupted files".
 
1) Give away Dell.

2) Get Mac and plug in.

3) No more worries.

-or-

4) Do like my wife did and get a Mac and run it Linux [not for me, though!]

Go out and fly an airplane instead.
 
Same response when booting to Safe Mode?

F8 during bootup.

Might have a corrupted user account file. If you can log on as Administrator in Safe Mode, you should be able to create a new user account.
 
Baron 55 said:
4) ...and run it Linux .
Click to expand...

I did do that with my last computer.

Thanks for the responses. I'll see what I can find out.
 
Sam Doolittle said:
Alright, I haven't posted much of anything here but have lurked for quite a while and need some help -- so, I'm relying on the groups generosity! :D As well as the fountain of this type of knowledge which I've seen.

In short, my Dell desktop won't boot. Gets past the splash screen and goes to a blank screen with a blinking cursor and that's it. Same result if I hit F2 (boot menu, I believe) or F12 (setup?).

Any ideas?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Specify "Splash Screen". Do you mean the screen with the Dell logo or the Windows splash screen? Just wanting to clarify ;) And F8 is what you press for the Windows boot menu.
 
I had similar issue with my laptop. "Repaired" windows with the rescue disk. Lost nothing, system was restored.

I traced the problem to shutting the cover during the shut-down process. Apparently the "save to disk system state" got confused between suspend and shut down. I'm more careful now....
 
wbarnhill said:
Specify "Splash Screen". Do you mean the screen with the Dell logo or the Windows splash screen? Just wanting to clarify ;) And F8 is what you press for the Windows boot menu.
Click to expand...

Dell logo. It hangs within seconds of starting up. Now, if I can just find the recover disk...I've dutifully held on to my printer drivers, DVD installation, etc...Arggg!
 
Sam Doolittle said:
Dell logo. It hangs within seconds of starting up. Now, if I can just find the recover disk...I've dutifully held on to my printer drivers, DVD installation, etc...Arggg!
Click to expand...
Let us know if the recover disk works (and continues to work). My work laptop had (er, has, I just got a replacement, never bothered to track down the problem after the second time... heh.) an issue where it would sit there with the cursor blinking and I would repair the drive and it would work for a while longer, then the same issue. So I replaced the drive itself, and that worked for about a week before the same issue started to appear with the new drive. Furthermore, I started getting unspecified STOP errors and "threads unexpectedly closed" blue screens. Startup files started to get corrupted so I would get messages about that instead of the _ just blinking. Booting from a Knoppix Live CD worked fine, and I could use the laptop as if there was no problem whatsoever. So my guess at that point is that there's an issue between the hard drive and motherboard, but if the IDE controller is failing, it's not showing on the DVD drive side of things.

So anyhow, the moral of my story is keep watching it for the same symptoms after your initial repair. You MIGHT have something a bit worse than a one time issue. Run a chkdsk from time to time just to see if there's anything. It never failed that when my problems started showing up if I ran a chkdsk from the Recovery Console, the system would find multiple errors on the drive.
 
wsuffa said:
I had similar issue with my laptop. "Repaired" windows with the rescue disk. Lost nothing, system was restored.

I traced the problem to shutting the cover during the shut-down process. Apparently the "save to disk system state" got confused between suspend and shut down. I'm more careful now....
Click to expand...
Thats one reason I disabled that feature and when you hit the power botton it will ask you what you want to do.
 
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