Lexington Computer Repair Blog

As anyone who has had this problem and consulted Google can attest, there are a lot of reasons why a PC may boot to a black screen with a blinking cursor. I have a list of 15 fixes that I use when I get a Vista computer with this problem (I’ll publish it some day). I recently wrote a post about  solving the blinking cursor problem in Windows 7 and wanted to follow it up with another solution that is pretty simple to implement and worth trying if you have this problem in XP, Vista or Windows 7.

This morning I was testing a composite video to USB connector on my Windows XP laptop. I needed to copy some files from a USB thumb drive over to the laptop. I rebooted the machine after installing the drivers and accidently left the USB thumb drive connected. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem but this particular thumb drive is a boot drive for Ubuntu Linux and so my machine accidentally booted into that instead of back into XP. To make a long story short, I got impatient with the shut-down process in Ubuntu and hit the power switch before it was completely shut down. The result was that my trusty Thinkpad would no longer boot, it just sat there with a blinking cursor. I got a similar result trying to boot to Safe Mode.

OK, I admit that a little panic set in as I thought about all the un-backed-up pictures of my daughter on that drive, but I kept my cool (I ain’t no fool), let me tell you what happened then. I removed the drive from the laptop and attached it to a SATA-to-USB cable and connected to my Windows 7 machine and ran a CHKDSK on the drive. Sure enough, that was the problem, CHKDSK found a few errors in the file system, fixed them and upon reinsertion, the drive booted like a champ.

Conclusion: Quite often you can start to solve a compound problem by doing a CHKDSK on your boot drive. If your PC has recently had a BSOD or shut down abruptly, and then subsequently will not boot, it may have hosed the file system, run a CHKDSK. You don’t even have to take the disk out of the machine the way that I did to accomplish this. You can use your Windows XP installation disk to boot to the Recovery Console and run a CHKDSK from there. Vista and Windows 7 installation DVD let you boot to a pretty nice set of tools that allow you to open a recovery window as well (just open a Command Prompt). Just put your installation disc in the drive and turn on the computer, you might have to hit F12 to get the boot menu to force it to boot from the CD/DVD player.

When we get calls here from computer users, the three most common questions we get are:

1. How do I tell if I have a virus?
2. Should I buy a computer that runs Vista?
3. How can I speed up my computer?

I recently sent these tips about the last item to Hartland Computer Services customers (some suggestions on the first question can be found here, and the quick answer to the second question is “no”).

Speeding Up Your XP or Vista Computer

1. Add more memory -
When Windows runs out of RAM (Random Access Memory) it starts moving programs out of memory and onto the hard disk, this slows down the computer – often considerably. Here is a very general rule of thumb, if you are running Windows XP, use at least 1GB (one Gigabyte) of RAM, if you are running Vista, 2GB is normally sufficient. To find out how much RAM you have, go to the Windows Start Menu, open Control Panel then click on “System” (“System” may be under something like “Performance and Maintenance” depending on how your menus are set up). You’ll find your RAM listed there next to the speed of your processor.

2. Get rid of those dumb toolbars –
The latest trick of hardware and software manufacturers is to sneak a search toolbar into your browser. These toolbars, by Yahoo, Google, McAfee, Ask and others take up screen space and, if you get more than one of them, often fight with each other, slowing down your internet experience. To stop the madness, open your browser and go to “Tools” then choose “Add-ons” or “Manage Add-ons”, look for entries like “Yahoo Toolbar” and “Ask Toolbar”, highlight them and then click the “Disable” button. When you restart your browser they’ll be gone and quite often you will feel a noticeable improvement in browsing speed.

3. Ease up (a little) on security –
The level of security provided by many of the commercial software “suites”, for example Norton 360 and McAfee Security Suite, is quite high. The real-world equivalent might be like living in a gated community with 24-hour police patrols, door locks, bars on the windows, a moat a drawbridge, surveillance cameras, a helicopter above…well, you get the point. I’ve seen the processing overhead of these suites drag the performance of an otherwise decent computer to the ground. Personally, I prefer a just a good anti-virus program (most of my customers know I prefer Avira AntiVir, Kaspersky has a good reputation as well) and Windows Firewall (you should probably add an on-demand spyware checker like SuperAntiSpyware as well). Whatever you do, do not run two anti-virus programs on the same machine, they will tend to fight each other, miss viruses and slow your computer to a crawl.

4. Test your internet connection –
For most people, “slow internet” and “slow computer” are one in the same because they have the same impact on you as a user. It might be helpful to know if your slow computer is actually a problem with your internet service. For those with Insight Broadband, you can go to their test site, found here, to test the speed of your connection. Personally, I suspect that Insight’s test always tells you that your internet connection is great (and I have some evidence to back that up) so you might want to try an independent site like www.speedtest.net as well. If your results are less than say 9Mbps (that’s 9 Megabits per second) you might want to call Insight and have a chat with them (I’ve generally found them to be pretty responsive).

5. Scan for viruses –
No advice on speeding up your computer can be complete without a recommendation to scan for viruses. I won’t belabour this point here. Make sure your Antivirus program is up-to-date – that means virus definitions from today- and run a full scan of your computer (as per my last email to you, you should make sure you are not running a bogus Antivirus program as well).

I was recently working on an HP laptop running Vista (simply the worst operating system ever, hands-down) and ran into a little problem. Of course it was of my own making, as most of my problems turn out to be. Most computer manufacturers these days are too cheap to so cost-efficient they don’t give you operating system discs anymore, rather they put the OS and the drivers on a recovery partition on your hard drive. When you have some kind of catastrophic failure (which you will eventually if you run Vista), you should be able to get the machine back to its out-of-the-box configuration using the data in this partition. Now, unlike having the actual discs, which will allow you to repair your OS and keep your data, these recovery consoles will completely wipe out your programs and files, alas.

On an HP laptop, you can normally hit the F11 key just as the machine is booting and get to the recovery console. You are obviously pretty desperate at this point and the last thing you need is for that not to work, but indeed sometimes it doesn’t. In my case, I had fiddled with the Vista boot manager trying in vain to to get Vista to boot. To make a long story somewhat shorter, this fiddling took away the ability to boot to the recovery partition and since Vista was unbootable as well, the options were few.

The solution to not having access to the recovery partition is to make it the active partition and boot directly into it.

If Vista is working for you, you can find the instructions on making the recovery partition active here. If you have the same problem as me, that Vista won’t boot either, then you’ll need to get first get yourself a bootable Vista repair disc. You can run that and maybe it will fix your problem, who knows – its never helped me. Again, assuming you are in Vista hell and the repair disk doesn’t actually repair anything for you, the advanced functions on that disk allow you to get to a command prompt. From the command prompt you can make your recovery partition active using Microsoft’s Diskpart.exe utility (read more about diskpart.exe here). Here is the general workflow:

C:>Diskpart.exe

DISKPART> list disk

DISKPART> select disk 0

DISKPART> list partition

DISKPART> select partition 1 (yours could be different, the list function should indicate which partition is the recovery one)

DISKPART> detail partition (this should help you verify that you’ve selected the right one, it should say HP_Recovery or something similar)

DISKPART> active

DISKPART> exit

Now, close your command window and restart the computer. You won’t need to touch the keyboard, if your recovery partition is present and working you’ll boot right into it. Good luck.

I recently worked on a laptop here that had a serious virus problem. After getting rid over 1300 virus-related items on the machine I tested Windows Update to see if it was still working. This is usually a pretty good test to run after clearing viruses as they like to disable Windows Update.

Instead of being disabled on this machine, the viruses had fiddled with the registry causing the PC to apparently report that it was running Vista rather than Windows XP. Using IE and selecting Tools/Windows Update, the user was redirected immediately to a Windows Vista update screen that showed how to reach WU under Vista. It was not possible to get to the proper screen.

I found a number of instances on the web where people had this same problem but not a good proven solution until I found this site: http://www.winhelponline.com/articles/35/1/Windows-Update-page-says-Thank-you-for-your-interest-in-obtaining-updates-from-our-site.html.

Deleting the registry keys as described immediately fixed the problem. Be sure to back up the keys first as described before attempting this fix

OK, I’ve been going on a bit about Vista lately, I guess because I’ve been working on more Vista machines than usual. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before (and am too lazy to go back and look) but I’ve discovered a phenomenon that I think is quite interesting. People come to me with broken computers so they are seldom thrilled with their situation, but people with Windows XP tend to be frustrated with their computer, people who have Vista are universally disgusted with Vista. I’m not sure what to make of the distinction but it’s another reason I wouldn’t like to be the Vista Product Manager in Redmond.

Putting on my helpful hat, I found a short article on speeding up Vista which includes a reference to Microsoft’s suggestions. I think both are worth a look for anyone having slow Vista issues. Having looked at this quite a bit myself, I’m sorry to tell the reader that there is just no silver bullet for speeding up Vista, sorry. Wait, that’s not entirely true. Here is my list of things to do if your Vista is slow:

1. Install more RAM
2. Install more RAM
3. Install more RAM
4. Upgrade to a faster Hard Drive
5. Uninstall all the garbage programs the manufacturer of your PC put on your computer (HP is particularly bad about this)
6. Reduce the printer overhead. HP and Lexmark are supposed to be printer companies but they fancy themselves as software companies. Both load tons of services and drivers on your PC. Personally, I don’t use their products because of this. If you do, try and load the minimum configuration that their install software will permit. If you are like one of my customers with one Lexmark and one HP printer and all the requisite drivers for both, you’re doomed.
7. Ease up on the security programs. These massive “security suites” are often worse than the problems they supposedly prevent (Norton and McAfee are completely out of hand, the rest are catching up). Get a good (free) antivirus (I recommend Avira AntiVir) and perhaps an on-demand spyware program like Spybot S&D (don’t install Teatimer), turn on the Windows firewall and you’re safe from 99% of the threats you can be safe from.
8. Install more RAM

Here’s the good news, RAM is really cheap right now and it’s not that hard to upgrade yourself (don’t let anyone charge you more than $100 parts & labour to do the job and if you do it yourself it will be a lot cheaper). Most of the consumer laptops and desktops I’m seeing are fitted with 1GB of RAM, that’s not enough for a good Vista experience. Get your machine up to 2GB total RAM and you should be laughing.

In my experience, disk defragmenting, disabling services and uninstalling programs (unless they are specifically causing problems) has only a psychological effect rather than a meaningful quantitative one (something like the Hawthorne Effect). It probably won’t hurt to try though.

A few posts ago I compared Vista to the Edsel, Ford’s disastrous auto introduction in the 50’s. After working on yet another Vista PC with the infamous KSOD (blacK Screen Of Death), I think that comparison may have been too generous.

I admit to not having a balanced view of the market, people who come to me have problems and they are often pissed off at their computer, operating system, Bill Gates or anyone else they can think of to aim their frustrations at (I recently referred to a customers dead computer as being useful only as a “boat anchor” to which he replied that he was thinking of using it more as a clay pigeon, such is the level of frustration one builds up).  But what I do notice is that the Vista problems that come to me are more arbitrary, more severe and the fixes either arcane or impossible. I hardly ever have to re-install Windows XP, but there are some problems with Vista that just have no cure.

As I mentioned previously, here in Chaos Central we run a network with XP Home, XP Professional and Windows 7, jumping over Vista. Generally, I’ve been willing to give Vista the benefit of the doubt though, it must work for some people right? But try Googling sometime for “Vista black screen with arrow” or “Vista black screen with cursor”. It’s not just the number of results you get there, it’s the number of people commenting on the blogs and forums that cover technology saying “I’ve got the same problem, is there no solution”. Well, no, there really isn’t a solution in many cases. The only good news is that in most cases, we’re able to save personal files like documents and photos but still, Vista just seems to fragile for production use.