Black screen with blinking cursor solved

[conmgt]

I installed 7 over and over again on an existing HDD only to end up with a black screen with cursor after the first restart.
Finally, I started the laptop again, Dell E6510, pushed F12 for boot options once again but this time selected BIOS Setup where I found a choice between Legacy and UEFI in the Boot Sequence setting.
Mine was set for Legacy instead of UEFI. Once that was changed, all was good.
I'm not sure why that made a difference other than I probably installed 7 under EFI.

What is EFI? Did I have a choice to install 7 there?

 

[pbcopter]

See this for a definition.
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the BIOS under boot order, you should see your DVD drive listed twice with the Windows 7 DVD loaded in the drive.
Once as UEFI (most likely the default) and once without that title. This where you chose which you want to install (MBR or UEFI) by setting the proper drive entry as the first in the boot order.

 

[gregrocker]

More here on UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS - YouTube.

Special steps to install to UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) - Install Windows 7 with - Windows 7 Forums.

In some cases users have found it easier to Bypass UEFI to Install WIn7

 

[SandeepP]

I installed 7 over and over again on an existing HDD only to end up with a black screen with cursor after the first restart.
Finally, I started the laptop again, Dell E6510, pushed F12 for boot options once again but this time selected BIOS Setup where I found a choice between Legacy and UEFI in the Boot Sequence setting.
Mine was set for Legacy instead of UEFI. Once that was changed, all was good.
I'm not sure why that made a difference other than I probably installed 7 under EFI.

What is EFI? Did I have a choice to install 7 there?

Hi conmgt,

You should have been able to install windows properly under Legacy mode as well. Once installed on legacy mode please disable the secure boot on the system and then check again and it should be able to boot Windows 7 as well.

Here is where you can find instructions on clean installing Windows 7 on a dell system shipped with Windows 8 and MSATA drive optional:

http://dell.to/131zitq

Hope it helps.