Welcome guest. Before posting on our computer help forum, you must register. Click here it's easy and free.

Author Topic: Windows will not start, getting black screen with flashing underscore  (Read 6789 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Raiden_B

    Topic Starter


    Newbie

    • Experience: Familiar
    • OS: Windows 10
    Hello yesterday I was using my pc and I got a BSOD with The error code memory_management the pc reset and it went though the bios screen fine but once it starts up windows I get a black screen with a under score moving around and flashing, no windows at all not even the advance option after multiple fails.

    I thought it was a hardware problem with the ram and so I tried multiple memory configs, I downloaded the windows installer and ran that as boot priority. with that up I tried to do everything from start up repair, system restore, system image recovery uninstalling updates I then went into the command promt and tried to follow the article "How to Rebuild the BCD in Windows" from lifewire (https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-rebuild-the-bcd-in-windows-2624508) I got to Option 1

    "Scanning all disks for Windows installations. Please wait, since this may take a while... Successfully scanned Windows installations. Total identified Windows installations: 0 The operation completed successfully."

    witch if I am sure means my storage is most likely corrupted along with the windows installation so I followed it more until I got to "attrib c:\boot\bcd -h -r -s" in witch the pc told me there was no c:\boot and so in my frustration I just tried to reinstall windows 10 I then tried to format the ssd and the hdd partitions using my windows installer and then install it to my ssd and it still doesn't work I think I might have to get some new storage but I am not sure if that would work.
    So does anyone have any ideas, it would be very appreciated.

    Specs
    Motherboard: PRIME X370-PRO
    CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
    RAM: 2x HyperX HX424C15FB2/8 FURY DDR4 8 GB RAM 2400 MHz DDR4 CL15 DIMM
    GPU: vega 64 sapphire nitro+
    SSD: Kingston SA400S37/240G SSD A400 240 GB SSD
    PSU: Seasonic 550W
    HDD: 1 TB internal hard drive
    Sound card: Xonar AE


    DaveLembke



      Sage
    • Thanked: 662
    • Certifications: List
    • Computer: Specs
    • Experience: Expert
    • OS: Windows 10
    Re: Windows will not start, getting black screen with flashing underscore
    « Reply #1 on: December 12, 2018, 09:51:11 PM »
    Did you get this Windows 10 Installation media from Microsoft using their tool to create it?

    Your hardware list doesnt show a HDD yet you stated ( I then tried to format the ssd and the hdd partitions using my windows installer ) did you mean SSD partitions or do you have a hard drive installed but its missing from hardware list?

    If you have 2 drives in this system, remove that drive that Windows is not going to be installed to. Then install clean to that single drive. See is that works better for you.

    Note I have seen before where a system has the Windows installation on a drive that is connected to SATA 1 and a drive that has a troubled install of Windows on a drive connected to SATA 0 and so you end up installing to SATA 1's drive but upon reboot it try to boot off the other drive at SATA 0 which is not bootable but it has remnants of a boot record causing the system to try to boot off it but it never succeeds and it will cause you to go crazy trying to chase it down.

    However the BSOD prior to all of this could mean one of your drives might not be healthy as well. I had a SSD fail once with a BSOD and upon reboot Windows wouldnt load. Troubleshooting further by plugging the SSD into a External SATA to USB drive dock and connect it to another system of mine to connect to it as an external I ran crystaldiskinfo against it and it was flagged with a warning in the S.M.A.R.T data. Upon trying to format the drive however it got worse and eventually would allow me to create a very small partition in disk management but when trying to format that partition Windows would cartwheel and the format process would crash trying to format it. It was a 6 year old OCZ SSD drive that had heavy use, but they can fail at any time.