t42 blinking cursor issue - I used the search...

[aarghj]

I have that dreaded t42 blinking cursor issue. The problem is, I dont have an original hard drive to clone an image from, nor do I have the recovery cd's. I got this computer used, and in pieces. I rebuilt it, and had it running for over a year.

I had Linux on it and it ran fine. I was going to sell it and wanted to put windows xp back onto it(I have a full retail copy to use), but I'm running into this [censored] blinking cursor issue. I remember fixing it about a year and a half ago but cant for the life of me remember what I did to fix it. Any suggestions on how to fix it would be greatly appreciated.

Please remember, I do NOT have recovery cd's OR a working partition to clone.

[agarza]

What do you mean by the blinking cursor, do you mean the machine is not booting or what?

[Tim M]

What do you mean by the blinking cursor, do you mean the machine is not booting or what?

If so, it sounds like the drive is not bootable. Perhaps a set of recovery CDs could be found on the Marketplace to solve this issue?

[Johan]

You may see the thread T41 HD cloning w/Acronis: no luck, PITA (see the post of Tue Jun 24, 2008 9:25 am) or the thread Upgrading Hard Drives, Blinking Cursors, and the MBR - it may perhaps give you some inspiration? Maybe the Lenovo Master boot record repair kit or Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette may do the trick?

Like Tim says, I also support the suggestion to get a set of Recovery CD's; you ought to be able to get them for a very modest amount (I actually have a DVD holding images of the R&R 7 CD's... and how much does such a DVD cost to make; not much! If I had been in France I would have happy to send you a copy, but there ought be forum members closer and hence able to help you faster).

Johan

[phubai]

I have a new Dell 630 (provided by my company) and it developed the blinking cursor when I was on the road and in desperate need of some things on the computer. I downloaded and burned an Ultimate Boot CD on my MacBook which is full of free utilities, one of which is GAG; an ugly text based bootloader that installs on the MBR. It immediately enabled the Dell, and once I got the files I needed, I uninstalled GAG which restored the MBR to what it should have been. I've not needed to use it since, but you can believe the CD is in my bag when I travel! (So is the Mac!)