Black Screen with Flashing Underscore Cursor at Startup

G

Guest

After Windows Update finished downloading and installing a substantial number
of updates/fixes yesterday, upon rebooting, my laptop stopped booting after
the first Windows startup screen appeared and displayed a Black Screen with
Flashing Underscore Cursor.

I used a Windows XP startup floppy disk containing netsetup.exe to begin the
boot and, after netsetup.exe ran, I was able to get Windows to complete
booting and everything appeared to be working. I tried rebooting without the
boot floppy but the same problem recurs. Next, I installed the recovery
console from my Windows XP installation disk and used it to run FIXMBR and
FIXBOOT and rebooted but the same problem occurred but the computer would
boot OK by first using the boot floppy. Next, I did a Windows XP repair
installation and that went OK but the same problem recurred.

Now I am stuck with having to use a boot floppy to initiate booting Windows
XP. The hard drive is a new 40 GB, Toshiba, single partition with over 20
GB free, which I have checked for problems with Norton Utilities and the
Windows disk checking utility, so that's not the problem. Does anyone know of
anything else I can do to try to get Windows XP on my laptop to completely
boot without the boot floppy?
 
G

Guest

Golem said:
After Windows Update finished downloading and installing a substantial number
of updates/fixes yesterday, upon rebooting, my laptop stopped booting after
the first Windows startup screen appeared and displayed a Black Screen with
Flashing Underscore Cursor.

I used a Windows XP startup floppy disk containing netsetup.exe to begin the
boot and, after netsetup.exe ran, I was able to get Windows to complete
booting and everything appeared to be working. I tried rebooting without the
boot floppy but the same problem recurs. Next, I installed the recovery
console from my Windows XP installation disk and used it to run FIXMBR and
FIXBOOT and rebooted but the same problem occurred but the computer would
boot OK by first using the boot floppy. Next, I did a Windows XP repair
installation and that went OK but the same problem recurred.

Now I am stuck with having to use a boot floppy to initiate booting Windows
XP. The hard drive is a new 40 GB, Toshiba, single partition with over 20
GB free, which I have checked for problems with Norton Utilities and the
Windows disk checking utility, so that's not the problem. Does anyone know of
anything else I can do to try to get Windows XP on my laptop to completely
boot without the boot floppy?
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top