Win XP SP3 no boot - black screen only...
- From: "TL \(at work\)" <tlmitchell99(nospam)@earthlink.net>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:47:59 -0400
Greetings all,
Got a problem that may be lengthy to describe. Short story, when I turn on
my XP Professional machine I get a black screen with blinking cursor
following POST, nothing else.
Long story:
I was troubleshooting an Outlook Express problem where OE6 wouldn't load,
just hang at the splash screen. All the MS articles indicated in order to
reinstall OE6 I'd need to reinstall Internet Explorer 6 since OE6 is an
integral component. First I'd need to uninstall IE7.... sheesh.
Anyway, after uninstalling IE7 and having no success reinstalling IE6 I
decided to do an Upgrade reinstall of XP Professional. My install CD is SP1,
which is where some problems lie as the installed version has been upgraded
to SP3 with all patches and updates. When I booted using the SP1 install CD
the setup files loaded giving me the usual choices, enter Setup, start the
Recovery Console or exit. I chose to enter Setup.
Setup displayed 3 partitions all labeled "unknown" representing my 3
physical hard disks, all showing the SP1-limited size default 131 MB drives.
Two of these HDs are 320 MB and the 3rd is 300MB..... that's when I
remembered the 131 MB limitation of SP1 and exited Setup in order to find
another method to fix my OE6 problems. I took no other action nor made any
other Setup selections prior to exiting.
Upon reboot I encountered the black screen and no boot. Using a Windows XP
Home SP2 CD from another machine I was able to boot to the Recovery Console
and navigate via the Command Line to the 2nd & 3rd physical disks. Using the
DISKPART utility on the setup disk the primary HD shows the correct size but
no partitions. The primary disk has one primary partition of the default
SP1-limited 131MB size as well as an extended partition containing 3 logical
drives. The other 2 physical drives show correctly and I was able to
navigate to directories and see the file list on both. With the exception of
the 131 MB primary partition created during initial installation, all
partitions were created using the XP Disk Management utility after upgrading
to SP2 immediately after initial installation. All use NTFS.
Prior to attempting the reinstall I scanned for viruses and malware using
several utilities, none were present. I also ran the XP System File Checker
with the /scannow switch hoping that might take care of my OE6 problem. No
such luck.
It appears I have a problem with either the MBR or partition tables, or
both, on the 1st hard drive. I've scanned through numerous Knowledge Base
articles referring to repairing MBRs using the FIXMBR command using
Recovery Console... dunno if that's something I should do. I'm an
experienced user, however I have no experience messing with boot records or
partition tables.
Appreciate any thoughts or pointer,
TL
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: Win XP SP3 no boot - black screen only...
- From: thecreator
- Re: Win XP SP3 no boot - black screen only...
- Prev by Date: Cannot reach toolbars from taskbar
- Next by Date: Re: The network path was not found
- Previous by thread: Cannot reach toolbars from taskbar
- Next by thread: Re: Win XP SP3 no boot - black screen only...
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
|
