Boot problem. Flashing cursor after POST.

Balfa

We had a power outage recently (clock on the microwave off, etc.) and although that PC is on a surge protector, it seems to have suffered a little. Now when booting, after the POST (currently overlaid by an Asus logo), it goes to a blank screen with a flashing underscore cursor.
I've tried running FIXMBR and FIXBOOT on the XP disc's recovery console.

I've tried two different PATA hard drives (a seagate st340823A and a st3250623A, although only the former actually has a boot sector on it) at four different IDE positions (primary master, slave, secondary master, slave) using F8 at the POST screen to choose boot device, and get the same result every time.

My DVD drive boots fine, though. And if I boot to Winternals ERD Commander, it actually recognises the drives fine and I can read from and write to them no problem.

Does anyone know why I'd be getting this strange undrescore instead of even a "cannot find operating system" type error message? And how could I go about fixing this?

I've backed up everything on the smaller drive and am ready to reinstall windows on it, but I'd rather not go to the bother if it can be fixed without doing that, and I definitely don't want to do that if it won't even help!

Thanks in advance for any help.


edit: sorry, It's an ASUS K8N Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250 motherboard with a Sempron 64 3000+ Palermo, 1GB of PNY RAM, and a GeForce 6600GT.

Conar

The fact that ERD Commander can see the drives and read/write to them really make it sound like an MBR issue.
I always boot from a DOS disk and run the FDISK /MBR to fix that kind of issue but you mention you've used the FIXMBR from the XP recovery console so that probably rules that out.

Sorry I'm just repeating what you have already said but it has to be an MBR issue.
That would wreck my head.

Try fixing the MBR again is about all I could suggest.

scojones

In this situation I would do a parallel install of XP, back up my data, format the HDD and install XP again. It'd save time in the long run - providing the disks are fine. As you say you can read and write to them so they should be OK.

Other people would opt for a repair install but I prefer the wipe + start again approach.

Balfa

I tried the boot drive on another PC last night and it told me there was a disk read error, instead of just sitting there like an eejit. Abit BIOS > Asus BIOS ::rolleyes::

But as you say, if it works fine after I boot from a CD, it's probably best to just reinstall windows on it. I've already copied all the stuff on it, so I should be grand.

tippbhoy

Balfa wrote:

I tried the boot drive on another PC last night and it told me there was a disk read error, instead of just sitting there like an eejit. Abit BIOS > Asus BIOS ::rolleyes::

But as you say, if it works fine after I boot from a CD, it's probably best to just reinstall windows on it. I've already copied all the stuff on it, so I should be grand.

would the disk read error not be related to different IDE hard disk drivers because of trying it on a different PC. Sounds like a board or mem issue to me.

Balfa

No, drivers won't matter. Any Ultra-ATA 133 E-IDE drive will work on any Ultra-ATA 133 E-IDE motherboard controller. The drivers help the operating system communicate with the controller, not the controller communicate with the drive.

Conar

Balfa wrote:

No, drivers won't matter. Any Ultra-ATA 133 E-IDE drive will work on any Ultra-ATA 133 E-IDE motherboard controller. The drivers help the operating system communicate with the controller, not the controller communicate with the drive.

Have you tried creating an XP boot disk?
NTLDR, boot.ini, Ntdetect.com.

The fact the ERD commander can see and interact with the OS has to point to a boot record or boot loader issue.