Stuck at blank screen with flashing hyphen!

[Horwood]

I recently got the error "A disk read error has occured, press CTRL, ALT and DLTE to restart. I managed to get rid of that error by using startup repair on the Windows 7 disc. I now get a blank screen with a small flashing hyphen on the top left of the screen. Using Windows 7 professional 64-bit. Please help, thank you in advance.

I'm using a tablet at the moment, my Skype is 'horwood58' if you need to see the problem through my camera.

 

[Horwood]

Gonna reinstall Windows, hopefully fix it.

 

[Horwood]

Nope....

 

[jumanji]

Is it your Dell laptop under the System Specs?

If so, is it still under warranty?

Have you made the system recovery Disks for that Dell laptop?

 

[SandeepP]

I recently got the error "A disk read error has occured, press CTRL, ALT and DLTE to restart. I managed to get rid of that error by using startup repair on the Windows 7 disc. I now get a blank screen with a small flashing hyphen on the top left of the screen. Using Windows 7 professional 64-bit. Please help, thank you in advance.

I'm using a tablet at the moment, my Skype is 'horwood58' if you need to see the problem through my camera.

Hi Horwood,

Welcome to the Seven Forums.

It could be an issue with the harddrive of the system. If its a laptop you are using then please check the link below to run diagnostics on the system:

http://dell.to/11NpLCy

Please run the diagnostics and let us know the results.

 

[Britton30]

Sometimes it takes running Startup Repair 3 times.

 

[gregrocker]

After running Dell Diagnostics Utility - How to Run the then reinstall and this time make sure you delete all partitions except the OEM Diagnostics partition during reinstall.

If Dell Diagnostics partition will not boot to run then run the HD maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan followed by Disk Check from the booted installer's System Recovery Options Command line. You may need to first format a full disk partition using Step 2 in SSD - HDD Optimize for Windows Reinstallation .

If the bootable diagnostics partition will not boot then you can wipe the HD using Diskpart Clean Command from same command line.

Follow these steps to get a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Report back results with exact error text and failure point.