Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

I've seen several references to this on google searches but haven't managed to fix it and it seems to be something to do with data that has been restored...
I'm fixing the laptop for a friend and his old HD came up with lots of bad sectors and prompted chkdsk to run constantly and recover data.
I swapped the HD out for him, did a fresh install of Vista and that seemed ok. The problems seem to start after I recover his old data using Acronis.
Initially I tried recovering all the data to the original locations which was bad as it resulted in errors in the profile etc.
I then tried a new install then recovered all the contents of the old drive to a folder on root of C called 'old disk' but then it would hang on booting for ages and startup repair detected two Vista OS's installed as I had recovered the Windows folder and things like bootmgr etc into that folder.
So I tried again, fresh install then used Acronis Boot CD to only recover the following into the C:\old disk folder:
Users
Documents and Settings (from previous install)
Program Files
Program Data
Old drive (folder)

I didn't restore the Windows folder or any files on the root of C.

and get the blinking cursor on black screen again...
Some of the data on the backup was corrupted so I have run chkdsk a few times to correct that which it seems to have done now.
I have also tried startup repair and also fixmbr/fixboot etc in recovery console.
It does get to the Windows splash screen and scrolling bar but after about a minute of a black screen with the flashing cursor.

The laptop had a SATA drive in it, it's recognised that fine in BIOS so I didn't think that was the issue. It's a Toshiba laptop, can't remember which model specifically but came with 160GB as standard, I put a 250GB drive in to it.

Could it be something in Program Data/Program Files/Users causing the issue?

I had already run a number of AV/Malware scans on it before as I thought possibly it had a boot virus or something...

Re: Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

What happens in safe mode?

Re: Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

Not sure, forgot to try. I'll give it a try and let you know. I think I did try it and it stayed on the cursor for ages then at the point where the Windows logo and scrolling bar normally comes up it went to the boot options then so essentially it stays on that black screen with the cursor for about a minute before it even gets to the boot menu for safe mode etc...

Re: Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

If it's fine in safe mode then it'll probably be a device driver, in safe mode use msconfig (run it from the command or run prompt (windows+R key)) and disable all of the start-up items, then add them one by one and restart each time.

Re: Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

I'm not certain what is occurring here. I started off thinking new disk might be bad but then began to wonder if it could be something to do with using the acronis boot disk.
I'll detail what I do for data recovery in case that might help. It may seem a bit long-winded but it always works.

Firstly make an acronis image of the old disk. I always work from an image to avoid problems with the bad disk failing or decaying further as the process goes on. Also you can be fairly sure that the files in the image are error-free as by default acronis will fail on a bad file/folder. Save this image to a usb external drive.
Next I temporarily install Acronis on the new disk and use that to mount the saved disk image from the usb drive.
Once the image is mounted I create a temporary 'saved files' folder on the desktop and use windows explorer to copy/paste across to this from the mounted image. Files from there can be sorted and relocated later.

Long-winded as I said, but it has always worked for me.

Once it's all done, unistall acronis and get the user to help sort out the mess of files.
;)

Re: Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

Cheers both, I tried safe mode and still had the flashing cursor for ages and then it came up with the menu and loaded into safe mode fine. The delay is before the boot menu comes up it seems.
I'll have a crack at that recovery method, cheers DaiNasty. It took about 8 hours to recover all the data on each go before. What was annoying was it sticking on corrupt files and having the options to 'ignore' or 'retry' but not 'ignore all' so I had to keep clicking on ignore loads...

Re: Vista stuck on black screen with flashing cursor?
 

If Acronis fails on errors you might find this useful:

http://www.ehow.com/how_7604983_acro...re-errors.html

Good luck.