[NTLUG:Discuss] blank screen with blinking cursor in upper left

[Fred James]

Fred James wrote:

>
>>> All
>>> The symptom is "blank screen with blinking cursor in upper left" on 
>>> boot - also cannot ssh to the box
>>> Action so far - I figured now was as good a time as any to move the 
>>> box from Mandrak 9.1 to Mandriva 2007 - install went well, video 
>>> looked good all through it - on reboot however, returned the same 
>>> symptom as above.
>>>
>>> Thank you in advance for any help you may be able to offer
>>> Regards
>>> Fred James
>>>
>>>   
>>
> All
> The answer on this one seems to have been the hard drive - even though 
> the hard drive was "visible" to the install.  I reinstalled putting / 
> and MBR on hde1 and bingo, off and running.  Right now the problem 
> seems to be that the system (I reverted to 9.1) doesn't really like / 
> and MBR on hde1, so tomorrow I plan to either remove hda (the 
> suspected problem drive), and make the current hde become hda - or at 
> least swap some cables - we'll see how it goes - and then install 2007 
> on the new hda.  Even if nothing else, I suppose I may learn 
> something.  By the way, (the old) hda was visible to the system after 
> putting / and MBR on hde1
>
> My current suspecian is that the first sector of the old hda is toast 
> - does that, or anything similar, make sense?
> Regards
> Fred James

All
One last post from me on this one -- I (at least for the moment) decided
to leave all disk where they are and reinstall but using a separate
/boot partition on hde as well as / -- looks good so far (cross my
fingers) -- sees everything including the suspect drive.  Gee, if I only
had a budget - oh, well.
Regards
Fred James