Windows xp boot flashing underscore

That is the problem with more info I don't know what is really wrong or what else to tell you Click to expand Holy Crap, thanks for the post, but unfortunately it is not going to be necessary. You were right. The boot sector s were bad. I had to reinstall Windows outside the first 4 GB's and hopefully it will work fine now. Thanks for your help. It is always good to get an outside opinion. You are welcome That is what we are here at this site for.

Glad to help, come bck anytime to share. Do you have anyway of testing it? Also read the responses of others to this problem, you might find a solution there Also how old is your HDD? This one is free kimsland said:. Any thoughts? And since you are burning image to your disk can we assume you have another PC to your disposal? I did not mean to bash your idea, it just seemed to me that if he attempts the recovery and the HDD has bad sector s it still might not work.

Personally I would check the HDD just in case. Similar threads J. You can now sync Philips Hue with Spotify to make your lights react to music. Replies 1 Views Sep 3, mountains. If it feels good, do it.

Originally Posted by jagabo. Sorry to be a nag Also, did you try to boot to Safe Mode? Reason I ask is that if it will boot in safe mode, then you know that something is being loaded that is preventing boot.

That would be a big help. On the other hand, if it still will not boot in Safe Mode you know that none of your software is causing this and that points to hardware. BTW- if a hard drive fails, you will get the message, "Insert bootable disk and reboot computer" or words to that effect. You aren't getting that. You can unplug the computer, remove the CMOS battery.

There will be a small jumper that you move to one side, wait 20 seconds and move back into position. It is usually located somewhere near the battery; see your mainboard manual hopefully you still have it.

Reinsert the battery be careful, don't reverse the polarity! You may be pleasantly surprised. Another thing you can do is to rebuild your Master Boot Record MBR ; sometimes they corrupt from hardware crashes and virus attacks. If no joy, then rebuild the boot. I tried setting the 1st boot device to the hard drive.

No joy. I'm not seeing any prompts to boot in safe mode. I'm also finding that just loading the Recovery Console is a problem. Half the time it stalls part way through or errors out saying this or that file is missing, just while trying to load the Recovery Console from my XP CD. When it does succeed in loading: In the recovery console, I'm not getting just a C: prompt.

It reads:. Originally Posted by aedipuss. Once they replaced it with a good copy, they were back in business. Disconnect the power cable from the hard drive, disconnect the data cable from the mobo. Then boot from that CD times. If it fails, just once, then either you have a bad CD or a second problem. Get a second CD and test that as well. The hard drive MUST be disconnected to remove it from the equation.

Power supply a likely problem, simply because they fail the most often. If you get good boots, then re-connect the HD and try more. No repair install advisable. Recover files, format, re-install.

I tried running this guy's step bootable repair CD. So, you are saying that the first computer has NEVER booted into Windows while using a copy of Windows that was installed while connected to that first computer? There is no need to "wipe" it -- as you install Windows, you have the option to delete each of the existing partitions, and then to install Windows onto the "unallocated" disk-space.

View solution in original post. It's possible that the disk-drive has "failed" -- the motherboard cannot read anything from the disk-drive, to start-up the "boot" process. To compare, a battery for a flashlight can be installed inside the flashlight, but, if it cannot supply any power to the flashlight, the flashlight does not produce any output. Physically present, but not functional. Windows is installed on there I installed it on another computer, taking the HDD out and putting it with the other computer and installing it there since the power to the keyboard is slow and cant hit the bios setup what not till it was already past the bios screen So, are you saying that your disk-drive, removed from your first computer, and then connected to the second computer, works fine?

Does the boot-up show the "worm" crawling across the screen, or the "spinner", as Windows starts to boot? If you power-on the first computer, and leave it for 20 minutes, does it finally boot-up correctly? Experiment: take any "spare" disk-drive, connect it to the first computer, and try to install Windows onto it. So, your symptom is that the motherboard is failing to read the first few blocks, the "boot sectors", from the disk-drive, at least on your first computer, or that the contents of those blocks no longer are "boot sectors".

I don't know why the second computer is the only one that can read those "boot sectors", and fully boot into Windows. Is the second computer booting from its own disk-drive, or from the disk-drive pulled from the first computer? Didn't find what you were looking for? Ask the community. Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type. Showing results for. Search instead for. Did you mean:. Need Windows 11 help?

Check documents and videos on compatibility, FAQs, upgrade information and available fixes. Windows 11 Support Center.