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

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

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

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

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

Don't try that option

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

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.

Just a shot in the Dark
This is a Dell computer - Dell has a small utility partition - please check if it is still there.


Cheers,
Gabriel

Hmm...I forgot about the recovery partition on a dell. However, it looks like it isnt there anymore because I installed XP clean from a normal XP cd. Thanks for the suggestion though. I havent had a free moment to try and repair the MBR, and thanks to NooNoo for the info on what I should run.

Gez

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!

Welcome to Windrivers Dellhell.

Thank you for contributing a solution and in such depth! :thumbs:

'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.

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

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.

' 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!


:)

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for the researched, detailed, accurate, and referenced feedback cadillacmike. It’s nice to get a response from someone who knows through experience what they are talking about and who adds to the knowledge bank. It sure beats the distraction of flaming attempts from high quantity/low quality attention seeking posters that plague all forums.

Yep – it’s either upgrade the BIOS to support 48-Bit LBA if possible or else keep the partition size below 128 GB on these old computers. My GX260 with BIOS version A09 is still running sweet from a 465 GB partition on the internal IDE drive and a 20” inch Dell 2007 WFP panel. Using the old girl to post this.

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Originally Posted by dellhell

..the distraction of flaming attempts from high quantity/low quality attention seeking posters that plague all forums.

...

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THE reason I took a long hiatus from this forum. I just come here now because I'm bored.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dellhell

Thanks for the researched, detailed, accurate, and referenced feedback cadillacmike. It’s nice to get a response from someone who knows through experience what they are talking about and who adds to the knowledge bank. It sure beats the distraction of flaming attempts from high quantity/low quality attention seeking posters that plague all forums.

Yep – it’s either upgrade the BIOS to support 48-Bit LBA if possible or else keep the partition size below 128 GB on these old computers. My GX260 with BIOS version A09 is still running sweet from a 465 GB partition on the internal IDE drive and a 20” inch Dell 2007 WFP panel. Using the old girl to post this.

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Thanks dellhell. Now if i could only learn how to type :D Over 25 years in the IT industry and I'm still a 2-finger hacker! ;) I go all the way back to the original PC & DOS 1.1. I need to clear my bookshelves out of all those old manuals some day. :o

Once i re-sized my HDDs to 128GB boot partition and a single logical drive in the extended partition, i've been completely free of the "BoD" aka Blink of Death. Now i can take a single HDD with file changes / updates from my home & duty station to update.

Just to let everyone know what i used, It was Acronis Disk Director 10 (no need to get v11) for re-sizing and their True Image 11 for the cloning. I can't be bothered with their backup / recovery, i don't like proprietary backup routines, and I have several spare HDDs for use as backup clones and others for file transfer / synching. My old favorite for these disk operations was Power quest's partition magic (I have v3 & v8) but once symantec got a-hold of it, well, you know... Acronis is the true leader in this segment now, and being forced to become an expert with them, they do work great.

I'm using some old ThinkPad T30s - yeah ancient, but they work! I have a 500GB SATA with a SATA to PATA Thinkpad Ultrabay HDD tray, and i can update that HDD from one T30 to the other, in about 10 mins. I've been trying to do this for months, and Finally can stop lugging the computer case with me when i go home on the weekends.

Interesting thing, the T30 can see and format a large HDD. I used XP Diskpart to create and format the 250, 320 & 500GB HDDs, but even with the last available IBM BIOS, booting over 128GB is not reliable. It doesn't matter to me, on all my old desktops & towers, i never put the data files on the same HDD as the OS. I always used separate physical drives or at least volumes. So, I'm back to that on Laptops. It's feasible with a Thinkpad and a dock that has its own Ultrabay, because the DVD/CD can go there with the HDDs in the internal bays. I can even attach a USB FDD (or the special IBM cable to the little port in the back) for a 4th drive (FDD).

In any event happy holidays to all, I'll scan the threads once in a while. While I haven't seen it all, I have seen most if it... :devil:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cadillacmike

Thanks dellhell. Now if i could only learn how to type :D Over 25 years in the IT industry and I'm still a 2-finger hacker! ;) I go all the way back to the original PC & DOS 1.1. I need to clear my bookshelves out of all those old manuals some day. :o:

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I am a mechanical engineer over the last 25 years but as I started out trying to financially justify various projects using Lotus 123 on an IBM XT with a 20MB hard drive running DOS 3.1, I know what you mean.

Going off topic if I may, pretty much everything I learned about computers has been forced on me by problems I had to resolve on the units I use at work or for my kids at home.

While Microsoft made some great products, the lack of proper in-built security and backup was, and arguably still is, a major flaw. Having to use third-party applications to address these flaws causes all kinds of user issues such slow boot/shut down, slow performance, conflicts, general time-consuming complexity and additional costs.

My kids tend to spend much more time on their smart phones, iPod Touches and iPads now than on Windows (telling in itself) and I never hear – “Dad, my IOS device has froze/crashed/app will not work, etc….”. Stuff may happen but these devices are so intuitive the kids can resolve the issues themselves. So while the IOS or Android devices have nowhere near the range of capability of a Windows PC, they do what they do real fast and real well.

With regard to the backup solutions you have highlighted, I agree that Acronis is a very capable product but you need to be careful what features you use and what you use them for. The 2009/2010 versions had problems with SATA drives and RAID systems.

I found Casper to be the neatest and most fool proof cloning application for total and immediately bootable backup of all of my non-Raid systems.

However, I have two Sony VAIO laptops with pre-configured Intel Matrix Storage Manager RAID 0 systems – risky in terms of the potential for data loss. I found the bootable rescues media CDs for both Acronis TI Home 2009 and Casper 5.0/6.0 could not see the RAID systems on these laptops as the CDs are Linux based and did not have the required drivers.

To back-up the VAIO RAID 0 systems, I had to resort to the excellent Storagecraft Shadowprotect Desktop that has a Windows PE based bootable rescue media CD.

I just thought I would stick my nose in this thread since it has been revived.

Perhaps I need to clarify my 3rd post and add to my post count:)

Under certain circumstances such as multiboot machines, machines with dynamic disks and machines that contracted a stealth virus, Fdisk /mbr can royally screw up your PC.

Extra Reading if you are interested
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/69013/EN-US
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/166454
http://forums.windrivers.com/showthread.php?t=29431


Given that many users read down to the first fix and try it without reading any caveats, the intention of the post was to prevent people grabbing their Dos boot disk and rewriting the MBR making recovery pretty much impossible.