Booting Win 8.1 gives black screen with flashing cursor

xpace

New Member
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5
Hi guys,

never had to post any questions about windows issues as I could find all my answers on the net.
Well, not now.
I had to reinstall the whole machine from scratch because old HDD has been playing up.
This is what I did:

1. Imaged old (faulty) drive to new one - just because I needed some data out of it and the old one was very slow and freezing.
2. run the system with new imaged drive - all working except sometimes it was playing up, so I decided to upgrade to another drive with Win8.1 from Win7
3. have plugged in new HDD to SATA0 port and the imaged drive to port SATA2
4. installed Win8.1, copied data over, reinstalled applications and so on.
5. all working perfectly. Now every time I boot up the machine, I'm offered options if I want to boot to Win8.1 or Win7. No problem there.
6. Now I wanted to remove the imaged HDD from SATA2 port, so I did - and here comes the problem:

All I get now is the black screen with flashing cursor in top left corner. How is this possible ?
Can anyone please help ?
When I plug the second drive in all works as before. I just have to remove the second drive. How can I do this?
In the attached image you can see my drives from Win8.1
the Disk0 is the one I need to keep - that's a Win8.1 ( C: )
Disk1 (imaged HDD) is the one with Win7 on it and needs to be removed.

Any help is much appreciated.
 

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My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Mac OS X
I have attention disorder and have a hard time with reading and making sense of your post ,
but I think I would boot to windows media disk and run the startup repair to see if it will fix the boot issue ,I think the issue is that the boot command was installed on the win7 partition
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win8.1.1 enterprise
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Hinze57
    CPU
    AMD FX 6100 6core 3.30gHz
    Motherboard
    gigibyte ga-78lmy-s2p
    Memory
    4gig ddr3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radon hd5000 Series
    Sound Card
    onboard realtek hd
    Monitor(s) Displays
    19" viewsonic/ 22"Samsung
    Screen Resolution
    1680x1050
    Hard Drives
    128gig ssd Kingston
    80gig WD 10000 rpm spinner
    Case
    micro
    Keyboard
    microsoft curve 200
    Mouse
    Logitech wireless M215
    Internet Speed
    high speed 20
    Browser
    ie 11
    Antivirus
    windows defender
    Other Info
    updated enterprise apr 2/14
Hey

thanks for the reply. It might be bit confusing, but all that matters is that the new drive with Win8.1 can't be damaged by any way, so I can't risk any boot repair without knowing it will work 100%
Here is again what is going on:
I have 3 drives:
A - newest with WIn8.1
B - new with Win7 that was imaged from the faulty drive
C - the faulty drive

drive C is not in the computer anymore
drive B still connected to port SATA2
drive A connected to SATA0 as primary drive - the one I need to keep

when PC starts it's giving me option to boot Win8.1(drive A) or Win7(drive B)

when I take drive B from the PC, Win8.1 won't boot, only black screen with blinking cursor.

I have attached the image in my previous post for everyone to see that on drive B there is a system reserved partition which I'm not sure if I need on the drive A (actual C: drive in system - disk0).

Question is how can I fix it, and if fixing the boot issue with repair disk will actually fix it or cause me more troubles.
When something will go wrong and I can't at least put it back together the way it is now, it is going to cost me lot of money.

Thanks again
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Mac OS X
sorry for the delay ,but I have nothing else to offer ,a bit over my heard I guess, I do remember running the boot fix on mine once with a similar issue ,but for me I just do things with no worries of what could happen ,
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win8.1.1 enterprise
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Hinze57
    CPU
    AMD FX 6100 6core 3.30gHz
    Motherboard
    gigibyte ga-78lmy-s2p
    Memory
    4gig ddr3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radon hd5000 Series
    Sound Card
    onboard realtek hd
    Monitor(s) Displays
    19" viewsonic/ 22"Samsung
    Screen Resolution
    1680x1050
    Hard Drives
    128gig ssd Kingston
    80gig WD 10000 rpm spinner
    Case
    micro
    Keyboard
    microsoft curve 200
    Mouse
    Logitech wireless M215
    Internet Speed
    high speed 20
    Browser
    ie 11
    Antivirus
    windows defender
    Other Info
    updated enterprise apr 2/14
Thanks Caperjack, you just saved me hours of heartache! I had 2 drives in my machine but was unaware the boot record was on one and everything else on the other. I just had to change the order back to boot from the 'empty' drive - I never would have thought to look there and I very nearly wiped it. When I checked hard drives in the device manager it would highlight the apparently empty one as the primary; now I know why. Is there a straight forward way to move everything to one hard drive?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win8.1.1 enterprise
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Hinze57
    CPU
    AMD FX 6100 6core 3.30gHz
    Motherboard
    gigibyte ga-78lmy-s2p
    Memory
    4gig ddr3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Radon hd5000 Series
    Sound Card
    onboard realtek hd
    Monitor(s) Displays
    19" viewsonic/ 22"Samsung
    Screen Resolution
    1680x1050
    Hard Drives
    128gig ssd Kingston
    80gig WD 10000 rpm spinner
    Case
    micro
    Keyboard
    microsoft curve 200
    Mouse
    Logitech wireless M215
    Internet Speed
    high speed 20
    Browser
    ie 11
    Antivirus
    windows defender
    Other Info
    updated enterprise apr 2/14
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