Windows 7 booting into Windows.old folder, black screen with cursor

I'm experiencing an issue I've been reading on here, all of the solutions thus far haven't worked for me yet though. My computer is booting up and after getting past the login screen, it will boot to a black screen with the cursor. Ctl+Alt+Del will let me bring up the task manager, and I can run explorer from there, but no programs or the like are available to run or anything of the sort. I know how I got here; I accidentally set my secondary hard drive (blank drive, just sort of for overflow once needed) as the Primary Drive. Upon booting, I was given the BOOTMANAGER is damaged screen and went through getting that all taken care of, resetting the MBR and such via the Repair/Recovery Console on the Install disc. That brings me to where I am now, logging in to a black screen with only the cursor. Upon booting into safe mode, I noticed that it was loading all my info from my "Windows.old" folder from when I upgraded to Win 7. I assume that when I set my OS for the recovery console, it used the OS found in Windows.old as opposed to the one I had been using before. I'm currently stuck trying to get this thing fixed any way possible. I assume I can install a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate on my secondary hard drive, and troubleshoot from there, or just use that as my boot drive, but if I can avoid that I would like to. Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Hi rrrrramos, and welcome!

when you boot up your machine, you can press a F key (typically F12, but consult your motherboard manual to be sure) to bring up the menu where you can choose the device from which the system should be loaded. This way you can avoid the bootloader on your blank drive. If this works, then you can further troubleshoot from within Windows.

If this does not work, then I would suggest disconnecting the blank drive altogether after which you can run the repair install on your system.

Also, you can use Partition Magic (just make a bootable disk with it on someone elses computer) to change properties of your drives.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, the issue isn't with the device that the OS is booting up from, I already disconnected the blank drive and have just the one main drive connected right now. The issue is that I must have directed it to use the previous Windows install (the one in my Windows.old folder) as the Current OS and that is causing it to go blank and not allowing me access to anything including programs, network etc.. I have to get the desktop to show by starting the Task Manager and running explorer.exe.

Basically, I need to find out how to get my OS to boot from the Windows folder, not the Windows.old folder that it seems to be booting from now. Thanks again!

Thanks. No, the only one listed is as follows:
Windows 7 Ultimate (C:\Windows.old\Windows) : Current OS; Default OS

If it helps, I originally pointed it to the correct disk by using the method found here:
Startup repair menu doesn't see an operating system

I realize this isn't the ideal way to get the screenshot up here, but snipping wouldn't work and if it did I'd have no way to go about getting it off the computer anyways, as it's not letting me access anything, even trying to explore the drive.

rrrrramos said:

I realize this isn't the ideal way to get the screenshot up here, but snipping wouldn't work and if it did I'd have no way to go about getting it off the computer anyways, as it's not letting me access anything, even trying to explore the drive.

Try using Visual BCD Editor - Windows 7/Vista tool, available from;

http://www.boyans.net/

There is a tab on the bottom row to edit the Boot Menu. I haven't used this in a long time, so don't remember all the particulars.

HTH