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General discussion

In a Jam - Blinking Cursor & Hang up on Boot, after I unplugged HD

by bradcoleman60 May 13, 2004 3:01PM PDT

I took my hard drive out of my Win 98 machine and moved it to another, newer machine. (I want to move all the data on the old drive to my new machine). When I could not get my new machine to recognize my old drive, I put it back into the old machine.

But now all I get on boot up, is a blinking cursor and a blank screen. Any ideas, what could be going on?

Thanks for any help.

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Re:In a Jam - Blinking Cursor & Hang up on Boot, after I unplugged HD
by Kees Bakker May 13, 2004 5:38PM PDT

I assume you have the master/slave switch set correctly, and used the same position on the same cable as before. That are necessary conditions.

If that's OK, I suggest two lines of investigation:

1. Boot into the BIOS and see what IDE devices it lists.

2. If the hard disk is listed correctly, boot from a Windows 98 boot diskette (make one from www.bootdisk.com, if necessary) and use the diagnostics:
- fdisk /stat (or fdisk /status, I always forget)
- scandisk c:
- chkdsk c:
- dir c:

This should give interesting information. Post back with the results.

Hope this helps.


Kees

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Re:Re:In a Jam - Blinking Cursor & Hang up on Boot, after I unplugged HD
by bradcoleman60 May 15, 2004 10:04AM PDT

Thanks for your suggestions. When I run BIOS the drive is recognized. When I used the boot disk, I was able to get to the C: prompt, but when I tried to view its content I received the following message:

Invalid media type reading drive c.

Thanks again for any suggestions.

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Re:Re:Re:In a Jam - Blinking Cursor & Hang up on Boot, after I unplugged HD
by Cursorcowboy May 15, 2004 9:37PM PDT
When I run BIOS the drive is recognized. When I used the boot disk, I was able to get to the C: prompt, but when I tried to view its content I received the following message:

Invalid media type reading drive c.

1. Since I don't understand the word "view", what was physically performed to do this?

2. If the computer using Disk Management Software we need to know the whole story, including the setting for the hard drive in the BIOS? - In some cases, Windows may not properly detect that you are using disk management software and may overwrite the master boot record (MBR) information. Refer to the documentation for the disk management software you are using for information about restoring the MBR, [Q186057].
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Re:Re:Re:In a Jam
by Kees Bakker May 16, 2004 4:27AM PDT
Back to Windows Legacy OS forum

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