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Help! Computer has blank screen with blinking cursor at top

A

arun_halley

Junior Member
I am facing a weird problem. Bought HP Pavilion Desktop E9240F (refurbished) 6 months ago. Worked fine till yesterday. Was downloading a trusted zip file when it suddenly restarted. It then gave me a blank screen with a blinking cursor at the top left corner. I think it is not even loading the MBR. Basically it brings me to the screen which says Press <CTRL +F> to enter RAID Option ROM utility... and then it goes to the blank screen with the blinking cursor. Can access only the F9 (system check) and F10 (BIOS setup) Screens. F11 - system recovery takes me to the blank screen with the blinking cursor. Out of HP warranty.
Tried to trouble shoot and here is some information that might help.
There is only one hard drive (1 TB)
In the BIOS setup, it is set to
SATA1 Controller - Enabled
SATA Controller Mode - RAID. (options are IDE, RAID, AHCI)
Ran the standard F9 test - everything is clean.

Then set the SATA Controller Mode to IDE. F11 works. Great! So then went into the recovery console. Tried the Self Fixing Errors console. Ran clean. Then Tried to reset it to a previous restore point. Goes through the entire routine without a problem and at the end says cannot restore to the previou point. Then when i try to boot windows, it shows me the Windows flying logo and then the computer restarts.

I feel it is a hardware problem. If anybody can throw some light and guide me that would be great. Or if additional information is needed, i can provide it.

Thanks
Arun
 
you say 1 drive is showing and it was set on raid in the bios.
Does this mean that you had it set up in a raid array? If so what type.
 
There is just 1 drive. I opened the case and physically checked it. Then shifted to IDE Controller and went to the recovery console and went into the System info. Found this for the hard drive. (C:\100 MB NTFS, D:\ 919.02 GB E (Factory Image 12.4 GB)
Ran every possible scan (Smart Scan) / HP hardware diagnostic tools powered by PC-Doctor and the components pass every test with flying colors.

I did not set it in a RAID structure. I bought it from BestBuy and started using it (default setting). Now that i have the problem i am looking into the BIOS.
I think it is RAID 0 though why it was setup in RAID 0 on just 1 drive beats me (faster r/w?). I go into CTRL + F to the RAID utility and it shows just one drive and that there is no partition on the disk.

Do let me know if you need any other information..
thanks
 
I see you have been to the hewlett packard forums as well🙂
What OS.
Is there only one sata controller on that board?
when you went f11 as I understand it, with that board it gives you an option to select system recovery. If you have no disks, can't get into windows, and the recovery partion is intact.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...t=4007354#N385

I'm unsure if you tried that option?
Can you boot a bootable cd or floppy? If so I would guess its a harddrive or harddrive driver issue.
I see from hp forums you tried swapping cables already, and someone suggested purchasing the recovery disks for 20 bucks.
no other thoughts at the moment sorry.
 
A blank screen with a blinking cursor indicates a failure of the boot cycle to find something. Check your BIOS boot order.
 
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