Blank Screen With A Blinking Cursor ...Have a Great Weekend!

Ya gotta love computers! They are like spoiled brats that throw temper tantrums if you look at them wrong.

Friday night I come home and booted up both of my machines. One loaded Windows XP, the other did not. I think, “Interesting, this has never happened before… oh well, I’ll just ctrl-alt-del and reboot it.” OK, fine, so it starts its reboot process; gets through BIOS with no problem then hangs at a blank screen with a blinking cursor (BSBC)… no Windows XP.

Now I’m a little worried. “Great, just what I need, another money pit!” So I grab the installation CD and boot from that. First, I head into Recovery Console so I can run a chkdsk. Initially it says everything is fine so I add the old /p to tell it to do a full scan anyway. This comes up with some HD errors. “Cool,” I think, “all I need to do is fix the errors, run a repair of Windows and I’m back in business!” NOT! ! ! Damn thing goes through the process yet all I see is that stupid BSBC again.

Curse grumble curse! But oh well, just to make sure, I unplugged my master HD and turned my slave HD into a primary single drive (Drive 0). Started the computer with the installation CD in and proceeded to install a fresh copy of Windows XP. Installation goes fine and then on reboot I find myself once again at that damn BSBC! #$%@&!

Now I’m a little on the irritable side! So I use the computer that booted fine and hit the internet to try to find a solution. I spend Friday night, all day Saturday, and 4 hours Sunday on the internet trying to find a solution. Everything I did ended in failure. I even spent an extra 2 hours on internet chat with a nice chap from Dell Technical Support. All he did was run me through everything I already tried. I don’t think he fully understood what the problem was because every once in awhile, he’d type things like; “After the CHKDSK /R runs, see if your HD is found under ‘My Computer.’” Hmmm…. If I could get to ‘My Computer,’ that would mean that I am able to load Windows XP! If I was able to load Windows XP, then I would not be having the problem of not being able to load Windows XP now would I?

*takes breath and pulls hair out*

Well, I tried resetting CMOS by removing the battery from the motherboard for a couple of minutes with the computer unplugged… reset the BIOS but still no Windows load. I reseated the RAM, the HD, hey, I even dusted the damn inside with canned air at US$594.59 per bottle. OK, so the air was not that much but it still seems rather expensive just for a bottle of air… even bottled water isn’t that expensive! Hell, one person even got their problem to work itself out by letting the computer just sit at the BSBC for an hour… mine didn’t!

SO, today I bought a new CMOS battery (just ruling everything out). I will spend yet another night trying to solve this mystery.

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When your computer gives you lemons, kick it until smoke comes out!