Blank Screen with Blinking Cursor

[depawl]

Hello:
This is a Compaq Presario SR5130NX, AMD Athlon 64, 1024 M RAM. Running Vista Home Premium. Was working fine a week ago. My niece took it to college and said it started “acting up”, then it wouldn’t start up at all.
When I took a look at it I found that it boots to a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.
Things I have tried so far:
Open case, checked cable connections. Unplugged and reseated hard drive power and SATA cables.
Tried booting into Safe Mode, same thing happens (blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner).
Booted from Vista DVD (I only have a Vista 32 bit DVD, so I don’t know if these tests are valid or not, since this is a 64 bit edition of Vista).
Tried startup repair. It said that no problems were found.
Tried system restore, and it said that there were no restore points (which is pretty weird, I’m pretty sure that when I looked at this computer last week I created a restore point).
I checked the BIOS and it is recognizing the hard drive, although it list the hard drive as the 3rd drive, and the dvd rom as the 4th dirve (the first and second drives say “None”.).
I verified that the boot order in the BIOS is correct.
Not sure what could be going on. I don’t believe that any new hardware or software has been installed, but who knows.
Any advice or suggestions would be most appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[linney]

The drive manufacturer will have free diagnostic bootable software to thoroughly check the condition of the hard drive.

Do you have a Memory Diagnostic accessible via any Boot Options, if not try this to check the RAM.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Make sure you get something compatible with 64-bit.

 

[BadBigBen]

Locate on the Mainboard SATA0 and plug the drive into that port, leave the DVD out for now...

if that does not work, then plug it into the next SATA port, e.g. SATA1, then SATA2 etc...

it may work and then again it can't, but it definately can not hurt...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[depawl]

This motherboard appears to have only to SATA ports numbered SATA2 and SATA4. The hard drive is already plugged into SATA2.
Thanks.

 

[BadBigBen]

Now I gotta admit that is some strange numbering mechanism that HP uses there...

another thing that pops up at the back of the mind, check your BIOS settings, specially those on the SATA ports and USB (make sure that USB LEGACY support is set to AUTO or better yet to DISABLED), on the SATA see what they are set to, e.g. AHCI, RAID or IDE (LEGACY)...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[depawl]

Update:
I have found a partial solution. I went to HP’s website and found that Recovery Console Command Prompt commands are available in Vista.
I booted from the Vista dvd, system repair, command prompt, and ran the following:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
and the system booted up to a Windows update screen that said “Configuring update 3 of 3”. I suspected that this may have had something to do with recent Windows Updates, as I found references to this problem when Googling. I suspect perhaps the system was shutdown during the update?
Anyways I thought I was home free. The login screen came up, I logged on, much to my dismay the system hung for a minute or two at the Welcome screen, then faded to a black screen with only the mouse pointer showing. Strangely enough Ctrl-Alt-Del brings up the screen with “Switch User, Task Manager, Log Off, etc”, but the normal desktop is just black. I cannot get to Task Manager. I can however boot in Safe Mode. No Restore Points are available. I uninstalled the 3 most recent MS updates, no change. I downloaded the latest video driver from NVIDIA’s website, no difference. Last known Good doesn’t work either. At this point I’m at a loss other that trying a complete System Recovery. Any other suggestions would be most appreciated.
Since this is a somewhat different problem, perhaps I should start a new thread?
Thanks.

 

[depawl]

Update #2:
For some reason, when the Welcome screen fades to the black desktop it reminded me of the secure desktop screen for UAC, hmmmm.....
Just for the heck of it I disabled UAC from Safe Mode, rebooted, and viola, Vista booted right up to my desktop. Can't wait to see what happens when I turn it back on tomorrow.
Obviously this Vist installation has some corruption somewhere, for now if everything remains ok I guess I'll just let my niece take it back to school and hope for the best.

 

[linney]

You could try the System File Checker program.

How to analyze the log file entries that the Microsoft Windows Resource Checker (SFC.exe) program generates in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928228

Have you looked in the Event Viewer to see if you can discover anything, you can ignore the errors caused by being in Safe Mode, concentrate on the ones just before the trouble occurred.