Black screen with cursor at startup

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Guest

Hi, i'm technician working for a public school. I'm having some troubles with
a pc which will boot perfectly on CD, floppy even USB but i can't on the hard
disk. Here's the different steps so far i tried to solve the problem:

- Replace the HDD
- Replace the motherboard
- Ghost the pc again with a working image that is use on 30 pc of the same
laboratory with same hardware (Windows 2000 Workstation).
- I tried also 3 others Ghost image which we use every day without success.
- I also ghost the pc with a Windows XP Pro which boots correctly!
- I did a total format and recreation of the partition tables using the
Windows 2000 cd installation without success.

But the really weird part is that when i install the pc with Windows 2000 or
Windows XP CD the installation goes smoothly without any problem. But when i
use a Ghost image which works on 30 pc with the exact hardware (IBM 3171-31F)
i'm stuck with a blinking cursor and a black screen at bootup!!! So could
anyone explain to me what i' doing wrong??? Any suggestions would be
appreciated!

Thanks in advance for any help!
Guillaume
MCP,MCSA,CCNA,A+,Network+
 
Guillaume said:
Hi, i'm technician working for a public school. I'm having some troubles with
a pc which will boot perfectly on CD, floppy even USB but i can't on the hard
disk. Here's the different steps so far i tried to solve the problem:

- Replace the HDD
- Replace the motherboard
- Ghost the pc again with a working image that is use on 30 pc of the same
laboratory with same hardware (Windows 2000 Workstation).
- I tried also 3 others Ghost image which we use every day without success.
- I also ghost the pc with a Windows XP Pro which boots correctly!
- I did a total format and recreation of the partition tables using the
Windows 2000 cd installation without success.

But the really weird part is that when i install the pc with Windows 2000 or
Windows XP CD the installation goes smoothly without any problem. But when i
use a Ghost image which works on 30 pc with the exact hardware (IBM 3171-31F)
i'm stuck with a blinking cursor and a black screen at bootup!!! So could
anyone explain to me what i' doing wrong??? Any suggestions would be
appreciated!

Thanks in advance for any help!
Guillaume
MCP,MCSA,CCNA,A+,Network+
Click to expand...

This usually happens when the boot partition is not marked as "active".
 
Hi Pegasus,
i did a few more test and it still won't boot correctly. By
the way my partition is already active. I made sure of this with Fdisk. I
also tried to remove the remove the keyboard and mouse in the boot process
just for the fun of testing it! I also remove the cd just to make sure that
the cd player isn't causing the problem. Finally in the booting priority list
i made sure that the hard drive was the first to boot up the pc from. And
still no success. So again any help would be appreciated!

Thanks again for everything!
Guillaume
 
Guillaume said:
Hi Pegasus,
i did a few more test and it still won't boot correctly. By
the way my partition is already active. I made sure of this with Fdisk. I
also tried to remove the remove the keyboard and mouse in the boot process
just for the fun of testing it! I also remove the cd just to make sure that
the cd player isn't causing the problem. Finally in the booting priority list
i made sure that the hard drive was the first to boot up the pc from. And
still no success. So again any help would be appreciated!

Thanks again for everything!
Guillaume
Click to expand...

I prefer to use Acronis products after reading about too many
problems with Ghost.

In your situation I would first ascertain if you have a damaged
boot environment or a damaged Windows installation. You can
do this by booting the machine with a Windows boot CD:

- Format a floppy disk on some other Win2000 PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
- Copy these hidden files from the root directory of the problem disk to A:\
ntldr
ntdetect.com
boot.ini
- Boot the machine with this floppy
 
Hi,
sorry for the delay but i got a lot to do lately. Anyway i did what you
ask and it work. I can boot from the floppy using the ntldr, ntdetect.com and
boot.ini from another computer. So, now, how can i adjust my pc with the
problem?

Thanks again
 
Guillaume said:
Hi,
sorry for the delay but i got a lot to do lately. Anyway i did what you
ask and it work. I can boot from the floppy using the ntldr, ntdetect.com and
boot.ini from another computer. So, now, how can i adjust my pc with the
problem?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

This is good news - it means that your Windows installation is
intact but that your boot environment is damaged. The usual
repair process goes like this:
1. Make sure your boot partition is marked "active" (you did this already).
2. Boot the machine with your Win2000 CD.
3. Go into Recovery Console.
4. Type these commands:
fixboot
fixmbr
 
hi,
I finally found the solution to my problem. It seems that when you get a
new PC from IBM it usually now comes with what they call "IBM Predestop
area". This option in the bios protects and hide a partition on the hard
disk. But even after disabling this option Ghost seems to had trouble
recreating correctly the boot sector on the hard disk. But if you recreate
your image with Ghost using the -IB switch it will then correct the problem...

Hope this help someone...
Guillaume
 
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