R61i boot issue

[rottenjeep]

I have a R61i laptop that will not boot.  When I turn it on I get the thinkvantage screen and then i get a blinking white underscore at the top right corner of the screen with the rest blank.    pressing any buttons does not change this.    It's Windows xp professional type 7650-cdu.  

[Duck3]

Multiple causes for this, and difficult to
diagnose on a forum.

This MS knowledgebase article may help:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314503

I would recommend taking to a good computer shop
in your area if you cannot find the solution on the web.

[harishnailwal Support Specialist]

I would suggest you to press F2 repeatedly after pressing the power button to enter in BIOS setting. If you are not able to get the BIOS setting screen then please contact the support centre.

If it goes to BIOS setting screen then please go to Configuration menu> Change SATA Controller> Compatible/ AHCI mode>Save and exit. Kindly restart your system and check the issue how it goes.

If the issue remain same then please check the boot order. To do so:

1. Restart your system.

2. Press the F2 key again and now go to Boot menu.

3. First of all, please check the boot order. Your hard drive should be on First place.

4. If not then please get it to the first place.

5. Then again Save and Exit

It will automatically restart your system and then  check the issue. It might help you out from the persisting issue.

[ajkula66 Guru]

BIOS is entered by pressing F1 on boot and not F2...

Try booting from a "live" Linux CD to check whether your hard drive and the files on it are "seen".

Good luck.

[Mornsgrans]

1. Did you replace the hard disk by annother one from annother laptop?
2. Did you clone your hard drive to a new one and attached it then into your laptop?

The blinking cursor means: "Bootrecord of the boot partition exists but cannot be found at the exspected address."

Concerning 1: This does not work on all types of thinkpads, because addressing the LBAs on the HDD is different to other Thinkpad models and notebook brands.

Concerning 2: The new HDD must be attached into the laptop and THEN clone after booting the clon-tool from a bootable CD/USB-stick from the old HDD connected via USB onto the new HDD built in.

[zoltanthegypsy]

I'll add 3) to what Mornsgrans said, just in case..

A Rescue and Recovery restore from USB to a new, blank hard drive can sometimes lead to this.

Restoring from a USB hard drive or a second hard drive results in a blinking cursor or an "Operating...

Z.