Vista Black screen and flashing white cursor at boot up prob

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2004
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Friend of mine called me tonight, her laptop wont boot up to Vista.

It fired up this morning apparently and came up with a screen which said something along the lines of "Please reload Windows or click to continue".

She clicked to continue and now all she gets when she attempts to boot the laptop is a black screen with a flashing white cursor at the top left.

Going to try a repair via a Vista CD tomorrow when she drops it off to me but I was wondering if anyone else here had a similar prob and managed to resolved it?.

Thanks.
 
I get EXACTLY the same problem when doing a restart from windows (flashing cursor in top left and no boot to windows), I boot ok if I shutdown first then retsrt by using the power switch..........odd and incredibly annoying.
 
Its strange.

I've just used the Vista disc to enter the Startup Recovery process and its telling me it cannot automatically repair this problem. Clicking on the error details it lists at one point "NOHARDDRIVE". :eek:

I also used a PE Utilities disc to attempt to recover some files from the laptop and again, the only volumes its detecting are the CD with the recovery software on it, cant see a hard drive listed anywhere.

I take it I'm goosed then?. Means the hard drive has simply died :confused: ?.
 
Draeger said:
Its strange.

I've just used the Vista disc to enter the Startup Recovery process and its telling me it cannot automatically repair this problem. Clicking on the error details it lists at one point "NOHARDDRIVE". :eek:

I also used a PE Utilities disc to attempt to recover some files from the laptop and again, the only volumes its detecting are the CD with the recovery software on it, cant see a hard drive listed anywhere.

I take it I'm goosed then?. Means the hard drive has simply died :confused: ?.
Click to expand...
Try a Linux Live CD such as SLAX(http://slax.hosting4p.com/) to see if it is there. If it is there it has not died just Windows and other Utilities have lost the ability to see it.
 
No luck.

Just tried Slax and again, all it can see is the CD and a USB drive.

The HDD is nowhere to be seen.

I noticed at boot up when the HP screen comes on, there is an "Hit F11 For System Recovery" but that doesnt work either.

Eventually managed to get into the BIOS and there's no listing of a drive in there either.

Looks like I have no further options to try. :(
 
I was thinking that too, however, its only a few months old and removing the HDD would invalidate the warranty, its got one of those little plastic stickers on the HDD that may be ripped if the drive was removed.

So its back to HP with it. To be honest, my mate only gave me the laptop to look at with a view to recovering some important files off it as we knew it was going back to HP to be repaired or replaced but we were not sure if they offered any data recovery services, so she wanted me to give it a try first.

I'm sure the wee silver sticky thing on the laptop HDD could be carefully lifted off to remove it and plug it back in to see if it is indeed, just a loose connection after a "knock" but I'm worried about compromising their warranty. Would HP throw a wobbly and refuse to repair it if they knew the drive had been removed for a few seconds and plugged back in?.
 
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