A very interesting blinking cursor problem...need major help

**gez** · July 17th, 2005, 04:14 PM

I have a Dell Optiplex GX260, running a P4 2.4 and 512 of ram, a 250 GB IDE primary and an 80 GB IDE secondary. XP Pro, SP1.

The other day I went to turn on my computer, which had been working fine for nearly a year, and I got the normal bios screen, however, when the bios screen clears, I get a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the top left hand corner of the screen (reminiscent of the matrix-except there are no instructions telling me to follow the white rabbit). No matter how long I let it sit, nothing happens. Now, if that wasnt puzzling enough, I have a backup install of XP on my 80 GB secondary drive (for instances such as this). I switch the drives so my 80 GB is the boot drive, and everything boots fine. No errors whatsoever. And, I see my 250 GB drive in Explorer, and can read/write it just fine. In fact, I am posting this from the backup install on this very machine. I checked all the obvious startup woes, such as boot.ini and everything checks out fine. It's beggining to sound like a MBR prob, any ideas?

Thanks in advance for any help

Gez

**Mayet** · July 17th, 2005, 04:42 PM

I had success with same issue and restoring the registry from a few days previous. mine came after the splash screen though and just stopped so i rebooted into safe mode and fixed the reg and did an scan and sfc - system file check.

I have aslo seen the same blinking problem where the jumpers were not set correct

I have also fixed similiar by using a boot disk and fdisk /mbr which did not affect the os but fixed the boot up issue

**NooNoo** · July 17th, 2005, 05:33 PM

fdisk /mbr from a boot disk will only work with FAT32 drives - doing it with NTFS will screw up the drive royally!

**Mayet** · July 17th, 2005, 05:58 PM

Ooher I musta had a lucky day that day.....

Don't try that option

**gez** · July 17th, 2005, 06:21 PM

Thanks for the suggestions, I think my next step is to start up the good ol' XP recovery console and see if I cant repair the MBR. Ill let you know how that works.

Thanks

Gez

**NooNoo** · July 18th, 2005, 03:30 AM

fixmbr and fixboot is what is needed to be run from recovery console... make sure you have backed up the disk - it is possible to make it completely inaccessible using these options if a virus or some other program has created this problem.

**dellhell** · October 21st, 2009, 06:32 PM

Given gez had a 250GB hard disk when the blinking cursor arrived out of the blue, the issue may have been the PC was running a BIOS version lower than A05 which does not support disk sizes >137GB.

I had a similar issue when upgrading the hard disk on my Dell Optiplex GX260 (running XP Pro SP2) from the old original 40GB IBM Deskstar to a new 500GB Western Digital – both are IDE type drives. I cloned from the old disk (master) to the new disk (slave) using Acronis TI Home 2009 and then put the new clone as master leaving the old disk disconnected. The new clone booted initially but stopped booting some days later – just a flashing/blinking cursor on the top left of the screen. I then returned the old disk as master and repeated the cloning process this time using Casper 5.0. Two weeks later the new disk stopped booting again with the same blinking cursor. Booting seemed to fail when there was a non-routine restart such as after running msconfig.

I contacted Casper Technical Support. As the clone booted fine for several days, they pointed me to look for something outside the cloning process such as the BIOS. I had though my BIOS was OK for the new larger disk for three reasons:

1. When I entered the BIOS, it saw the new drive and reported the correct capacity of 500GB.

2. There were Optiplex GX260 units out there with upgrades to 500GB drives and more – one website offers refurbished units up to 750GB.

3. When I reviewed the BIOS versions on the Dell website going from the A02 version on my PC to the latest A09 version, there was no talk of drive size in any of the Fixes and Enhancements for any of the versions.

Then I came on this article on drive size limitations and barriers

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_d...e_barriers.htm

and reading the section on BIOS ignorance, I looked at the Dell Website again very carefully. Lo and behold – in BIOS version A05 – not under the Fixes and Enhancements heading but under a heading unique to that version called Additional Information was some blurb that said version A05 now supported 48-Bit LBA for drives >137GB and also now incidentally supported booting from USB devices. Bingo – I needed BIOS version A05 or higher to support my new 500GB disk.

I downloaded the latest BIOS version A09 for the Optiplex GX260 from Dell. The Dell website provides very clear instruction on how to flash your BIOS. If you want to do this, read the instructions very carefully, then read them again and then again once more. Ensure you have no disruptions from kids, pets, parents, partners, ensure the mouse and keyboard are completely untouched by you hands or anything else during flashing and that the chances of you having a power cut are negligible. Get this wrong and you may well have a dead motherboard on your hands! In my case, this meant ensuring the BIOS was for the correct model of PC, I downloaded to a floppy as that was the Dell recommendation for my PC, followed the instruction to the letter including withdrawing the floppy at the end the flash process before booting with the new BIOS. All went well.

Now I installed my Casper clone (that had stopped booting) as master again and without any further repair or modification of any kind, it booted just fine and has stayed booting ever since (8 months and counting). Problem solved.

I have since fitted a second Western Digital 500GB drive as slave for backup and I am using Casper 5.0 to create incremental clones on it from the master. I have also kept my old original drive intact and stored in a safe and different place just in case!

**Niclo Iste** · October 21st, 2009, 08:35 PM

Welcome to Windrivers Dellhell.

Thank you for contributing a solution and in such depth!

**CCT** · October 22nd, 2009, 04:55 AM

'Given gez had a 250GB hard disk when the blinking cursor arrived out of the blue, the issue may have been the PC was running a BIOS version lower than A05 which does not support disk sizes >137GB.'

However, the poster HAD installed XP and had been running his boot OS on that drive with no problems, so that isn't likely the issue.

**Matridom** · October 22nd, 2009, 07:33 AM

and don't forget, that problem is 4 years old... Much has changed since then.

**dellhell** · October 22nd, 2009, 02:59 PM

Niclo Iste - thank you.

CCT - 'However, the poster HAD installed XP and had been running his boot OS on that drive with no problems, so that isn't likely the issue.'

The point is I was also booting XP fine from my new 500GB drive for between 30 - 40 cold boots and no issue until bang - blinking cursor. OK - I did not do a fresh install of XP - I cloned the old 40GB disk onto the new (the whole disk - not just the C: drive) and both Acronis and Casper saw the Dell hidden FAT 16 partition and both cloned it correctly onto the new disk and everything worked for weeks. If I was not in the habit of switching off the PC after each session, I may not have encountered the issue for a year.

When my new larger disk suddenly stopped booting, I tried the fixboot and fixmbr utilities from the repair console but that did not help. I then installed it as slave and, like gez, could see and access everything via explorer including the boot.ini file which was fine, i.e. the same as that on the original disk.

Gez never came back to say whether fixboot or fixmbr worked. I know that the solutions for my issue were not those of a missing hidden partition or faulty boot files. It was BIOS that was not 48-bit LBA compliant.

Like Niclo Iste says - my experience is a solution - for me and perhaps for others in the same circumstance - hence the post. I searched the net for solution and found several threads with new large disk owners whose disk had suddenly stopped booting and none of the usual fixes had worked and no fix was posted.

Bottom line:

If like me you have an old computer that works just fine for basic home stuff like browsing, e-mail and photo storage and you want to extend it's life by fitting a large (>137gb) internal hard disk, check that operating system (you will need XP SP1 or higher) and BIOS are 48-Bit LBA compliant.

There is a free HDINFO tool in 48bitlba.com that will do this for you.

**CCT** · October 22nd, 2009, 07:22 PM

' OK - I did not do a fresh install of XP - I cloned the old 40GB disk'

I rest my case!

Apples and Oranges.

I do NOT disparage your wanting to help, but these things are not the same.

edit: And, in the great reflexive look at all this stuff, one has to say to oneself, "The post is old, the posters are older, the issue is older, and the advent of W7 will make EVERYTHING all right again!"

I hope!

**dellhell** · November 2nd, 2009, 05:18 PM

CCT - 'these things are not the same'. So you are saying that the issue I had with a cloned large disk (Apples) cannot happen with a Fresh XP Install (Oranges) on the same large disk. Can you expand on this, i.e. have you first hand experience or knowledge that will explain why this is the case?

I see other forums where people have the same blinking cursor issue on Dells some time but not immediately after they did a fresh install on a large disk and where the BIOS was not 48-bit LBA compliant. Here is one example: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...rge-hard-drive

In some cases, the disk that could not be made to boot springs to life with a BIOS upgrade and where the BIOS upgrade is not possible, re-sizing the operating system partition to <137GB achieves the same result.
I know this is an old post and gez is long gone but they are other folk out there in 2009 running into this issue who perhaps like me will find this forum and I just wanted to help.

**Platypus** · November 2nd, 2009, 06:41 PM

dellhell, we do appreciate your contribution - thank you. On numerous occasions I've seen posts on WinDrivers saying people have found the answer to their current problem in an older topic, so it's always good to have such information available.

And please guys, I don't see the point in arguing with dellhell's experience. A BIOS with the Phoenix bitshift algorithm bug for example can report the size of a large drive correctly, operate normally for as long as no access beyond 137G is required, but the instant it is it all falls in a heap. A BIOS update that correctly implements 48bit LBA could cure this.

**cadillacmike** · January 6th, 2012, 02:55 PM

Hey, this thread's still open and i'e had this same problem for SIX MONTHS before finally looking it up on the net, so here i go.

I am coming down firmly on the side of dellhell. Just about every machine built before 2005 probably has this limitation (remember HDDs were only 40-60GB at that time, 100GB was the ultimate), and it's completely masked if you never install a large HDD. elaborate details are in this thread from Toms hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...rge-hard-drive

It does not matter if it is a fresh install or a clone. Initially neither method will cross the 128GB boundary (137,438,953,472 bytes), but eventually something will and on the next restart, you'll get the blinking cursor in the upper left.

XP utils FIXMBR and FIXBOOT WILL NOT correct this.

Win98SE FDISK /MBR will not help either. Nor will vendor specific items (like IBM's ThinkPad Recovery partition access util), because this is not an MBR problem, but rather a condition where some bit of XP boot information has strayed past the 128GB boundary on the HDD.

A fresh re-install or re-cloning will always work, until you stray over the limit again.

Further even though thisis an old post, the 3rd post from noonoo is completely wrong (I don't care if he has 100,000 posts, that statement is in error). FDISK/MBR will NOT harm an NTFS partition, in fact it is a quicker and easier way of fixing a boot disk that XP has stomped on and assigned the wrong drive letter. See this site for further information on the subject: http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.shtml

Re-sizing the boot partition will instantly correct the condition and the HDD will boot. I've done this and it works fine. You can then use the rest of the HDD as a logical partition for your data files.

Bottom line?? If you install a larger than 128GB HDD on an older machine be aware of this and set it up as a 128GB boot drive if your machine cannot support the 48 bit LBA addressing scheme.