Laptop won't boot

[sMgz]

I have an Asus F3T notebook computer. It came with vista, but a few months back I reformatted and installed XP without any problems. It ran for several months with no crashes or hangs or any problems at all. A few weeks ago, I tried to run the Backtrack 2 live CD off of a USB flash drive and then the problems started. It refused to run BT2 off the flash drive(or possibly I messed something up, but I'm not sure), and gave me a "Missing Operating System" message, but when I burned BT2 to a CD and booted it from the CD drive it didn't have problem. The next time I tried to boot from the HD, I got the "Missing Operating System" message again.

After putting off the problem for a while, I tried to reformat and install windows again. Everything went smooth with the install, windows saw the HD, formatted and installed without any problems, but when It restarted to finish the installation, it goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor after POST and won't do anything.

I've formatted and installed 3 times now, same problem each time.

Any help is greatly appreciated

-sMgz*

 

[cprince]

check to see if you have the BIOS boot order correct. The laptop might try to boot from an external usb flash drive. Try unplugging everything from the laptop(except for power) and see if it will boot(also make sure that there is nothing in the CD drive). If these methods won't work, then you might have a hard drive problem.

 

[DyslexicHobo]

Hi cprince,

I'm posting on behalf of sMgz; he's getting ready for a trip (on which he wants to use his laptop!)

He has tried putting both the CD and the hard drive as first on the boot list, neither worked. I will give him a call and tell him to unplug everything and see if he has the same problems.

 

[sMgz]

I checked the boot order a few times and even did a factory reset of bios options, no luck there.

I forgot to mention, I ran chkdsk through the recovery console and it found "one or more errors". I did it again with the /r (tries to recover the data in the bad sectors) and it hung at 50%. I rebooted and ran chkdsk again and it checked out with no problems.

 

[cprince]

Originally posted by: sMgz
I checked the boot order a few times and even did a factory reset of bios options, no luck there.

I forgot to mention, I ran chkdsk through the recovery console and it found "one or more errors". I did it again with the /r (tries to recover the data in the bad sectors) and it hung at 50%. I rebooted and ran chkdsk again and it checked out with no problems.

It sounds like a hard drive problem. If and when you got into Windows, backup all your data then do a Check Disk, but this time, check the box labeled "Automatically fix file system errors." You will need to reboot.

If you cannot get into Windows, find out what is the manufacturer of the hard drive(from the BIOS) then go to their site and download the hard drive diagnostic software. You will boot into the diagnostic software and check the drive from there. It will take a while to scan the hard drive.

 

[sMgz]

=/

I guess that's what I was afraid of.

thanks for your help