tried to install upgrade, after final reboot, no boot

Hello,
I have vista on my first partition, 7rc on the third (second is vista data).
I had read about how you could upgrade from the release candidate and wanted to try it. Everything seemed to go fine, until the very final reboot. (Windows was upgraded to the new version). I saw my regular boot menu again, but then windows restarted the machine one last time, and when it came back up it just sat there, nothing happened forever. And Vista won't boot anymore either - I do not even get a boot menu. Just a blank screen with a flashing cursor, and nothing happening....
I tried the repair options, but windows can't find any of my system restore points (I did set a number of them!) neither vista nor 7. From a command prompt I did try to run bcdedit and it shows that my original boot menu should still be there, but the system is unable to find it. I am completely stumped. Can someone please indicate what to do to get my system to boot?

Thanks in advance.
Margo Guda.

mhguda said:

Hello,
I have vista on my first partition, 7rc on the third (second is vista data).
I had read about how you could upgrade from the release candidate and wanted to try it. Everything seemed to go fine, until the very final reboot. (Windows was upgraded to the new version). I saw my regular boot menu again, but then windows restarted the machine one last time, and when it came back up it just sat there, nothing happened forever. And Vista won't boot anymore either - I do not even get a boot menu. Just a blank screen with a flashing cursor, and nothing happening....
I tried the repair options, but windows can't find any of my system restore points (I did set a number of them!) neither vista nor 7. From a command prompt I did try to run bcdedit and it shows that my original boot menu should still be there, but the system is unable to find it. I am completely stumped. Can someone please indicate what to do to get my system to boot?

Thanks in advance.
Margo Guda.

Hi and welcome

Can you boot into safe mode (F8)?
If so it is something in startup that is hosing the system. You can from safe mode run msconfig and do a diagnostic boot with all the extras turned off

Kenn J++

No, I cannot even get to safe mode. Power comes up, I see the first screen (when it checks the bios etc) and then when I would normally see the system check, with the list of hardware and afterwards, the boot menu, nothing but a blank screen with a blinking text cursor.

You might want to read this post from the blog of a Win7 developer:

Can I do an In-Place upgrade from Windows 7 Release Candidate To Release Code??

There have been successes with upgrading RC, but due to the ton of monitoring software which was still on it (until RTM) and beta buggyness, it is a gamble at best.

Suggest you boot from the newer Win7 installer, format that partition and clean install Win7. It will reconfigure the boot menu correctly.

You could also do an in-place Upgrade over Vista, however that is always less desirable than a clean install, preferably done by booting the Win7 installer to use Custom>advanced drive tools to delete the partition, create a New one and Format.

Using the first partition now may save you some work since when you want out of Vista it will be complicated to move a Win7 installation over onto the first partition space. But we can help.

So no chance of rescuing what I had there by a simple boot file? I did this because I had the system working nicely, and while I had not reinstalled all my apps from vista, i did already reinstall a number of them. So I'm very unhappy with this situation. Especially since I could see it go seemingly well, and then at the last moment to have this happen... Is there really no other way??

You should boot into the installer Repair console and run startup repair 3 times to recover the boot to whichever 7 installation will cooperate, probably the RC 2nd parittion. It will attempt several fixes before finally rewriting the MBR.

This should give you the ability to boot into F8 on new install to run the following fix.

The blinking cursor after install is a frequent issue for which this fix by Zidane has helped some:

IF YOU REACH A BLACK SCREEN WITH A CURSOR DURING THE WINDOWS 7 INSTALL THE FOLLOWING COULD HELP.

When installing Windows 7 let it get to the part where it reboots (for the second time) just after the' completing installation' stage. When it restarts press F8 and boot the new install in safe mode.


Alternatively leave the install running until you reach the 'black screen' and do a hard reboot (hold power for 5 seconds). On restart you'll be asked if you want to boot into safe mode, click 'yes'.

While booting in safe mode you'll eventually get an error saying "setup cannot continue in safe mode. click ok to reboot". don't press OK!. Press shift F10 and type "compmgmt.msc" and hit enter. When the computer management screen comes up go to device manager and disable the video card (not uninstall it). You will still get video so don't worry.

Close device manager and click 'ok' on the message and continue the install as normal, alternatively just do a reset. When the machine reboots this time you should have video, albeit it at a crippled resolution. Find the Windows 7 driver and attempt to install.

There are several other things we can try to recover your Vista upgrade, but eventually you may want to decide to delete it and move the RC into that space. If you made no changes to the RC during the Vista Upgrade it's boot is almost always recoverable with Startup Repair.

Perhaps a better idea is to obtain a copy of Win7 or the unlocked RTM (to choose a version) and clean install that in the first partition so that you can copy over files from RC, then insert a paid key after the 120 days you can postpone its activation.

Hello,

I was having similar problem. Here's where i found the solution:

No boot, blank screen and blinking cursor - My Digital Life Forums

check the second post by "Stool"

i hope it work for too

You can also run Startup Repair from the booted Win7 Installer as it automates all the boot repair commands. It sometimes needs to be run several times if there is more than one issue.

Gregrocker, I tried the following: ran the installation again from the dvd, and this time attempted a clean install, over the one that would not boot. (Those files should still be there in a safe location, according to SETUP). Ran the whole thing, and up came the boot menu. I even tried to boot Vista, and got to the login screen. Then I restarted and got the Windows Setup screens. Then another reboot, and the story repeated. It now tries to boot from the dvd, and after I don't press a key, just sits there...
I read the stuff about the mbr, and I am now wondering: is my problem the fact that my mbr gets overwritten somehow, or is it the graphics driver, as your instructions above seem to suggest? If I try the mbr rewrite, will I now make it impossible to boot my vista partition? Because now, that ability is still there somewhere - after the setup process finished I did get to that menu, and I don't want to lose that.
Also, I am unsure about the video card. This is a laptop - there is just the standard vga interface in the device manager. Do I disable that, and then where do I find the driver afterwards if I do?
It's a confusing situation...

No attempt to run Startup Repair 3 times to recover the boot? Instead you run a clean install over the Upgrade without even attempting the known fix for blinking cursor after Upgrade I posted above . You can find your video driver to backup on the Support Downloads page for your model laptop.

But since you have gone forward with an attempt to clean install before trying the fix, you now have overwritten the Upgrade attempt and there may/may not be a windows.old folder that contains your files from the Upgrade attempt.

You can try the fix now to see if you can start it up, but the problem here is likely that you are using a beta RC which was warned by MS (my first post above) not to attempt to Upgrade, using it for the even more risky attempt to Upgrade your Vista.

I am assuming you have your Vista files backed up since you have a partition named Vista files? So what I would do now is either copy over to the first partition your working RC in the 3rd partition, or boot into the installer and do a true clean install to that first partition by selecting Custom>Advanced drive tools to delete the botched Vista upgrade, Create a New partition there, format and install.