Blinking cursor on boot

notnarb · Mar 20, 2009

Ok, had XP, wanted to dual boot w/ windows 7 (as I am doing on my laptop now mind you) so I pop in a gparted live USB, shrink the partition and create a new 30 gig one (NTFS), and ensure that I do a safe shutdown. From that point, xp no longer boots, blinking cursor. No prob I think to myself and I install windows 7 onto the newly created partition. Same thing . I have tried the automated Windows 7 repair, bootrec.exe (both fixmbr and fixboot) and no dice. I decided to cut my losses and just install windows 7 over my xp install and same. damn. thing. Ran through repair options again, still nothing . Complete reformat would have to be a last laaaast resort, as I have 190GB of data on there, mostly from my old computers hard drive which will no longer fit in my case due to overabundance of cables from my new psu. Betas used - 7000 (I know that this disk isnt corrupt as I am using an install from it right now) and 7048.

sorry for wall of text

x-mah-D · Mar 21, 2009

Well, it seems it cant read the partition file system properly.
It's accessing it because it can load the cursors..
What is it type, NTFS , Fat32, what
Try downloading a live cd Linux Distro and burning it to a CD pop it in grab the files you need if it can acess them, and format thhe drive and reinstall.

MicShadow · Mar 22, 2009

If the Linux way doesnt work as suggested by x-mah, try using a program called testdisk.
You can get it in live cds and stuff. Use it to repair the partition table and probably MBR.

notnarb · Mar 22, 2009

Fixed the problem, burned a puppy cd and had it delete the second partition and make the original grow to fit the full drive. I am now going to make a point of never, NEVER, using a gparted usb livecd ever again

x-mah-D · Mar 25, 2009

Eh mate.
You just gotta know what your doing.
I Read up on tutorials 1st before i do anything like that.
Print them off in that case.
It is unknown if it was G-Parted or your fault.
Anyway you got it working.
Also
3
Word

Virtual
Machines
Bitch

hahaaha
Well go that you got it going.
I'm sick and even know im well i cant go to school so i might pull something like this out if im bored enough