Boot stops at flashing cursor

[NineToTheSky]

When I boot it goes through the BIOS setup, but then sticks on a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left. I've had the problem for about six months, and I've tried everything I can think of to sort it. I've got an Acer Aspire 1700 laptop with a P4 3.06, 1024mb RAM, 250Gb WD HD (yes, really!), XP Home, Norton Ghost and two external USB HDs(Seagate 120GB and Maxtor 160GB).

I've tried the recovery console, fixing the MBR, reinstalling Windows; I've even replaced the HD, but the problem keeps reoccurring. Sometimes it will reboot successfully a few times, but eventually it always fails.

One thing I've noticed...The contents of my boot.ini is:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

and according to Partition Manager, my C: drive has two partitions, as follows:

C: primary, active, 233GB, Partition 0, hard disk 0

and one called: *, 7.8Mb, Partition 1, hard disk 0, no other details

Does this mean that my system is trying to boot from *, if so, why?, where has it come from, and what should I do about it?

Any input gratefully received.

 

[stduc]

Nope, the * bit is a leftover bit of your HD that windows can't use.

primary, active are the key words that tell you its the boot disk.

6 months! - lol - you must be a very patient guy.

I would suspect one of two things here.

Malware (obviously) - but If that possibility can be eliminated then maybe you have some other hardware issue.

I think I would do two things

1. Run memtest86 to check no RAM issues (google for it, its free)

2. Change that timeout - 30 seems a bit low to me. try setting it to 120

 

[Freestone]

Have you tried booting without the external USB devices attached, and have you tried resetting BIOS to its defaults?

Just an FYI, the timeout value in boot.ini is in seconds, and its value is used when there is more than one bootable partition present. It's a countdown timer, and when expired, boots the default partition. In this case, it isn't used as there is only one bootable partition.