Blinking cursor only

First thought, like you, is hard drive as at present, and I may be wrong, but it looks to me it is booting from the disk only.
However, duff RAM can do similar and is possibly the easiest to check first. Pull out all sticks bar one, if no go, remove that one and try another.

If the RAM checks out OK, it is try the hard drive via a USB adapter and see if another computer can see it.

Nev.

 

Hi again, have you looked in the BIOS itself? I know you looked at boot menu but does the drive show up in the BIOS? Just looked up Dell Inspirons, it should be F2.
Some BIOS systems will complain others don't, but I am wondering now if the BIOS is actually working, if you can get into the BIOS pages it will at least prove that point.
I assume also you tried to get to safe mode, any luck there?

Nev.

 

Hi, apart from taking it to bits to get the hard drive out, I have run out of idea's. Hopefully someone else might have a few things to try before going through that.

Nev.

 

The only thing that I can really offer without getting to the hard drive would be to set the BIOS to defaults and then make sure that SATA is back to AHCI if that is where it originally was.

Hmmm, you may also try to simplify the system in the BIOS. If you have enable/disable ability in the BIOS for devices such as sound, network, anything except drive controllers and video, disable them.

Also, in the BIOS, make sure that the SATA channel for the drive is in fact enabled, not just available, and set as a boot device.

 

At this point, since you have backed up your data, it could not hurt to try a re-install. I would at least go as far as to see if the installer recognized the drive as a possible media.

I Do have a question. Early on you said that you tried a startup repair. Did you just run this once? If so run it a few times. Can't prove but believe that this repair only looks for issues until it finds one. It then fixes, if possible, that issue and exits. It does not look further to see if there are other issues. Before I gave up totally on startup repair I would run it several times. I had one system where it took three runs of startup repair to solve the problems. On the fourth boot Windows started.

BTW, I had to pull a drive from an Inspiron a few weeks ago to throw in a dock on my system to clean. There ARE a lot of screws but once removed the case separates easily and the drive is then easy to get to. One note, use a sharpie or such to mark screw holes as some screws are longer than others. It is bad design to not have an access plate to get to the drive but getting there is not as bad as it looks.

All the above said here is what I really think.

1) Just to get it out of the way... You are running a bootleg version of Windows and you are now paying for not paying. Please do not be offended if this is not the case, I am not at your machine and it is a possibility considering what you are seeing. It had to be said.

2) You have serious file corruption within Windows or have a serious infection. In either case, since you used the Linux live CD to copy off your files, an attempt to do a clean install is probably your best next move. Since the drive shows in your BIOS and was also accessible via the Linux live CD I doubt that the drive is gone unless the system was dropped or something causing a read/write head in the drive to crash a platter causing bad sectors or killing the head where Windows is located on the drive. Even though there are multiple heads and platters in today's drives I find that scenario hard to buy. Try the re-install. What do you have to lose?

Another BTW... What exactly do you mean by an International OS?

 

I just want to add something to my last post...

Under possibility 1) the way I worded it it may seem like I am accusing you of running a bootleg OS. That was not my intention. The way I worded it was, "You are running a bootleg version of Windows.....". I probably should have put an 'If' in front of that. As I said, please don't be offended if that is not the case. It is just something that had to be mentioned as fit as a possibility for the issue you have.

 

Hi again, having read through the thread once again plus all the good idea's from Jay, I am wondering about a couple of things, if the operating system was missing altogether, surely the fixes you have tried would at least have reported it couldn't find an operating system to perform a repair, or is it a case of, it didn't find anything to repair because the system wasn't there, so couldn't report anything?
I honestly don't know on that one!!

I am with Jay now and maybe a full clean install will sort the issue one way or the other, as with everything else tried, and especially the fact you could access data on the hard drive via the Linux disk, it is all pointing to the hard drive being OK, just a duff OS.

Nev.

 

You would think it would boot.
Windows behaves unusual sometimes.
Sometimes it's better to reinstall than spend many hours chasing an issue.
Often you can't charge the customer for all the hrs you spend.

 

The startup repair does just that. It attempts to fix issues involved with STARTING the OS load, not completing that load. The startup procedures can be fine but Windows still fail to load if even one file that is needed is corrupt.

Glad that the clean install worked for you!

 

All the above from me and glad it did work out OK doing the reinstall.
Just got to put back all the data now, and install software!

Nev.

 

Hey, Dragnet, I'm just curious. Before the issue started had you ever ran any registry cleaners/optimizers on the system?

 

Good man! Please continue to not do so. Those danged things cause more issues than they ever thought to fix.

If I may ask one more question... Do you use any peer-to-peer software like Frostwire or Torrents?

LOL! The third degree is over.