Blinking cursor at boot

[RegEdit]

PC crashed with "beginning physical dump of memory". Now won't boot. Just blinking cursor in upper left corner. All hardware all checks out healthy. HD passed drive fitness test. CMOS battery healthy. BIOS all looks OK. Boot order OK. Can't boot to advanced options menu.

What do you think?
fixmbr ?
fixboot ?
Repair install ?

[14049752]

Tdsskiller ..................

[Boston Pro Comp Serv LLC]

You can check for malware, but does sound like a missing or corrupt boot

[jogold]

scan it offline with anti-malware.

[16k_zx81]

Originally Posted by Boston Pro Comp Serv LLC

You can check for malware, but does sound like a missing or corrupt boot

Put me down for missing or corrupt boot. Also, remove any external storage devices

[jogold]

Also, remove any external storage devices

he's right, if there is a usb stick stuck in then it might cause the blinking cursor. If you disable boot from usb in the bios you wont get the problem.

[RegEdit]

As it turns out it was both corrupted or infected boot and this Security Sphere trojan virus.

[14049752]

Originally Posted by RegEdit

As it turns out it was both corrupted or infected boot and this Security Sphere trojan virus.

Yep, pretty common. Did tdsskiller do the trick (assuming you tried it)? I'm curious, because I've been dealing with boot time infections with the full version of Kaspersky and have been seeing some weird (non-tdss) mbr infections lately.

[RegEdit]

I had to use the Windows CD to fixmbr and fixboot , then it was able to boot, but then I saw the fake alert. So I used ERD Commander to delete a few startup entries. Now scanning and trying to figure out what culprit site this customer went to. This is the second time in 2 days I've had to remove this same virus off his PC.

Is there a HistoryView for AOL ?

[NETWizz]

Originally Posted by 16k_zx81

Put me down for missing or corrupt boot. Also, remove any external storage devices

Also remove ANY non essential USB devices and test. I once had a Dell OptiPlex GX270 (in 2005 or 2006) that did this and it was the printer. More specifically the card reader in the printer!

It didn't do it every-time. I had tested the power supply, check the motherboard for bad caps, ran the quick Dell Hard Drive Daignostics... All passed. I reset that bios with ALT E F B... Pulled the jumper to reset it! Flashed the BIOS...

Then I swapped the whole damn computer with one in another room (and swapped the hard drives)... the problem still stayed in her room! I presumed it was a software problem NOT a hardware problem.

1. Imaged the computer... still a problem. Okay... figured it MIGHT be a bad HDD that tests good.

2. Replaced it from a box without marking the other one BAD (I had like 40 spare drives)... Imaged... Same problem.

At this point every part was different at this woman's desk! She had a clean/new HDD with a clean image that was working on 1,000's of computers. I had already looked and saw no externals.


Next, I unplugged everything except a keyboard, mouse, monitor & power... It worked.

I added one thing back at a time until I found something that failed... Then I added everything else back and traced the cable... An HP Printer. I had an epiphany that it was the card reader!

I then looked in the BIOS and was able to change something so that the GX270 was not even going to look for USB boot devices... <== That fixed it!

^^^^^^^^^^^^ This problem took about 45min to 1 hour due to the imaging & part swaps. I learned something though!