Windows 7 boots to black screen with blinking cursor

06
2014-01
  • murgatroid99

    I have an Alienware M17x that dual boots into Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7 Home Premium. Currently, the computer starts at the GRUB loader and will boot into Ubuntu, but if I try to boot into Windows, I immediately get a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.

    The output of fdisk -l is

         Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/dm-0p1               1           5       40131   de  Dell Utility
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/dm-0p2               6        1918    15360000    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/dm-0p3   *        1918       64772   504878877+   7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 3 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/dm-0p4           64772       77827   104858625    5  Extended
Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/dm-0p5           64772       67204    19531008   83  Linux
/dev/dm-0p6           67204       74498    58593536   83  Linux
/dev/dm-0p7           74498       77577    24731648   83  Linux
/dev/dm-0p8           77578       77827     2000128   82  Linux swap / Solaris

    I have used the Windows rescue CD, and run the automatic error fixer until it finds no errors. I have run chkdsk /R on both the main Windows 7 (/dev/dm-0p3) partition and the recovery partition (/dev/dm-0p2). I set the main Windows 7 partition to be active. I also tried running in the recovery console the commands

    bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

    None of these helped and the last set of commands deletes grub, which I then have to reinstall from Ubuntu.

    I think the last thing I did in windows before this started was install the newest ATI driver for my video card. This would suggest using system restore, and I actually had a restore point earlier (after the problem started), but after whatever I did that restore point does not appear in the list on the recovery disk any more, so I cannot do a system restore.

    Is there anything else I can try to make Windows boot properly again?

    Edit: Running the suggested commands

    bootsect /nt60 c:
bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

    was also ineffective.

    • Answers
  • jdh

    With this setup, an in-place upgrade of windows 7 should recover it. It installs a new win7 OS on top of the existing Win7, keeping any user settings and application installs. That will again load the Windows boot loader over grub. You can recover grub without reinstalling linux. Search for "recover grub2" for your favorite author blog.

  • snayob

    You can try fixing Windows 7 manually on command prompt.

    1. Start Recovery CD (or Installation DVD) and go to recovery, command prompt.
    2. Do not fix MBR ! Let it be GRUB based.
    3. Iterating c:, d:, e: .... find your Windows 7 drive letter.
    4. Type bootsect /nt60 drive_letter_for_Windows7 - This will write Windows PBR (partition boot record).
    5. Type bcdboot c:\windows /s c: - replace drive letter c: with drive_letter_for_Windows7 - This will fix Windows bootmgr and BCD store.

    Reboot and select Windows 7 from GRUB2 menu - this should chainload the partition boot record (PBR) and Windows boot manager.

    If it is still not loading Windows 7 boot manager run again "grub-install" in Ubuntu to update GRUB menu entries and try again.

    All you have to "say" to GRUB is that it should chainload the Windows 7 partition for "Windows7 menu entry"

  • Redsandro

    I recently had the very same issue after creating some new partitions, causing Windows 7 to shift from sda1 to sda2.

    Turns out, Windows is a real Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity about it. My blood boils just remembering those hours I wasted.

    I bootsect.exe'd and bootrec.exe'd all I wanted, but when I finally removed the partition before the Windows partition, so that the partitions were reordered, Windows booted again.

    You can also fix this with a very dangerous procedure where you manually swap the partitions in the partition table using fdisk, so that they are listed in a different order than they are actually physically on the disk.

    Windows actually does this on purpose to punish you for fiddling with a working Windows installation.


    • Related Question

    Windows 7: "The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible 0xc000000f"
  • piratejackus

    I have a problem with my Acer 3820TG machine running Windows 7 (and dual booting with Ubuntu 10.04).

    When I try to boot Windows 7 I see an error:

    Window failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
    1.Insert....
    2. .... ... status : 0xc000000f info : The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible

    I can't exactly remember what my last actions were on Windows. I already searched this error and applied the proposed solutions, I created a repair USB (because I don't have a CD-ROM nor a Windows 7 CD) such as:

    • Repair operating system - it says it cannot repair it
    • Checking disk (chkdsk D: /f /r) - it checks the disk without a problem or error and it takes a pretty long time (more than a hour). However when I restart, I still have the same error.
    • I didn't create a restore point so I pass this option
    • I don't have a system image

    • I tried to run Windows Recovery (I have a recovery partition) but there are just two options:

      1. Format the operating system but retain user data (copies the files under users to c:\backup folder, but when I searched deeper I found that there are some people who already tried this option and couldn't find their user files under backup directory). Plus, I have unfortunately just one partition D (it is a fault I know) because I use always Ubuntu. So this is not applicable in my situation

      2. Format the entire system (Windows). I keep my valuable data in Windows but not in the user folder. I was reaching them from Windows.

    • I tried to repair Windows boot by: 

      bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /fixBoot
bootrec /rebuildBCD

    • I lost all Grub menus, so reinstalled it. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708&page=29 - nothing changed, same error.

    • I created a thread in the Microsoft Forums: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7install/thread/69517faf-850a-45fd- 8195-6d4ed831f805 - however I couldn't find a solution.

    Before I run chkdsk from the USB repair disk I wasn't able to mount the Windows (NTFS) partition from Ubuntu. I was getting a "couldn't mount file system, error code 2" error. I tried to fix the NTFS partition from Ubuntu but got a "segmentation fault". I also created a thread on ubuntuforums for this mount problem: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1606427

    After chkdsk, I was able to mount the Windows partition but all I see in this partition is chkdsk logs, no any other data.

    I don't think I lost my data because I didn't get any filesystem errors, just the boot section, but this log files under the Windows partition makes me afraid.

    Microsoft developers don't have a solution yet for this error.


    • Related Answers
  • MasMarco

    Could be an issue with the Bios incorrectly setting the ide configuration. For example if you have installed in IDE mode an the moved to AHCi. Happen to me one time. Changed back to the correct setting, system booted fine.

  • 8088

    I had the same problem with my HP laptop. I found a solution for this problem, but it will erase your installation partition. I had two partitions C: and D: - my installation partition was C: when I got a message like you:

    Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

    1. Insert....
    2. .... ... status : 0xc000000f info : The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible ....

    I used Active@ KillDisk to erase the C: partition and left the D: partition. After installing Windows 7 again on the C: partition, everything works fine.