Win wont boot without F8, blinking cursor

TwinTurbo · 14 Dec 2011

Help! After the system hung (nvstor issue!!) it won't reboot. It gives a blinking cursor, a blip of activity from the hdd and then nothing. F8 works and I can boot into everything there, safemode, repair...everything works. Even booting windows normally from there works ust fine. With F8 it's like booting up skips something (or uses the F8 boot menu instead of something else) and it goes to the windows starting screen and starts just fine. Bootmanager perhaps?

Boot recovery didn't help, neither did sys restore. Anyone have an idea?

tnx

Marck

TwinTurbo · 14 Dec 2011

I already found the issue, F8 also brings up the hdd selection boot menu before the windows boot options. It's THIS selection that allows it to start normally because I select my correct drive there. Went into bios and sure enough the 2 drives were swapped aroudn in their respective order. What could cause this? I have a feeling it's related to the nvstor issues I've been having

gregrocker · 15 Dec 2011

Run a full Malwarebytes scan

Post up a screenshot of maximized Disk Mgmt drive map/listings: Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums - Windows 7 Forums

TwinTurbo · 15 Dec 2011

It's not malware. I'm on a resh isntall ater win7 took a dump rom that same nvstor problem I've been having (disk hangs, no activity and mouse freezes) so malware is out o the question. I did scan it, nothing what so ever.

maximized Disk Mgmt drive map/listings ??? do you mean this?

Win wont boot without F8, blinking cursor-dskmgmt.jpg

I have a feeling all these issues, are related to the nvidia norce chipset driver. I have the latest version and it's a little better but under heavy disc usage it often still gives a yellow nvstor exclamation mark error. This the system recovers from but the red error it hangs on. Never had this prob beore (when I wasn't running W7-64)

Kaktussoft · 15 Dec 2011

TwinTurbo said:

I already found the issue, F8 also brings up the hdd selection boot menu before the windows boot options. It's THIS selection that allows it to start normally because I select my correct drive there. Went into bios and sure enough the 2 drives were swapped aroudn in their respective order. What could cause this? I have a feeling it's related to the nvstor issues I've been having

So F8 also displays the BIOS boot device menu? Try setting the right disk on top of bios boot devices. at least higher then the wrong disk

TwinTurbo · 15 Dec 2011

That's exactly what I did and that fixed it. What I'm wondering is, how could it have swapped around?

gregrocker · 15 Dec 2011

Your BIOS battery could be dying.

Run a pass of Startup Repair to make sure there are no boot issues.

Kaktussoft · 15 Dec 2011

when you press f8 and select the right disk nothing has to be fixed!! That's why "startup repair" and "system restore" didn't fix your problem.

What was in BIOS the boot device sequence? probably floppy,dvd, harddisk 0, harddisk 1.
You told in thread both disks were swapped. What happens when starting from wrong disk?

It should execute the MBR of wrong disk and search an active partition on it. This is not the case so it should have said something like "operating system not found".

I think your MBR on disk1 (where E-volume is on) is corrupt. Was this once a linux disk or did you do strange things with it? To fix it and to prove I'm right:

-press F8 and enter recovery console. Then Commant Prompt
DIR E: (sure this is your E volume?)

Code:

BOOTSECT /NT60 E: /FORCE /MBR

try to reboot from wrong disk and see if there is still a blinking cursor. OF course we still don't know why swapping of disks occured.

gregrocker · 15 Dec 2011

This is why I suggested running a pass of Startup Repair which has all boot commands automated.

Kaktussoft · 15 Dec 2011

TwinTurbo said:

I already found the issue, F8 also brings up the hdd selection boot menu before the windows boot options. It's THIS selection that allows it to start normally because I select my correct drive there. Went into bios and sure enough the 2 drives were swapped aroudn in their respective order. What could cause this? I have a feeling it's related to the nvstor issues I've been having

nvstor problem and swapping of disks are not related! nvstor is just a devicedriver and doesn't change bios-settings