KSOD Problems

I'm not talking about the Vista/7 KSOD with an easy fix.

It effects all Windows 2K/XP/Vista/7. When you boot a computer, after the BIOS/UEFI and all you get is a blinking white cursor in the upper left corner on a black screen. I have seen this at least a dozen times this year with no solution to the customers.

The data is still intact upon the hard drive. You can pull the hard drive out and read it from another machine.

It's not either the pagefil.sys (page file/swap file) or hiberfil.sys (hibernation/sleep) files. Registries seem to still be intact both system as well as local users.

The only thing I can think of it is some kind of rootkit or botnet attached to the NTLDR, similar to the Alureon virus and XP BSOD a few years ago. The only reason I think of this is because there is no "OS choice" menu or "Flying Windows" loading screens.

i've seen a few of these and i can't figure out how to salvage the OS either. My solution was to use my USB hard drive reader to get the data and then do an RoP...

This issue is usually due to one of two things. In most cases, it is due to a bad MBR (Master Boot Record) which can be fixed the majority of the time using an OS disc, going into the Recovery Console, and typing in FIXMBR. If, after following this step, the white line still blinks at the top left, then the MBR issue is due to a faulty sector on the hard drive.

Now if you can't even boot from a disc, then check the BIOS settings for the hard drive and make sure it is set to IDE (even if it is a SATA drive). Sometimes the other hard drive option is tied to the chipset, but the OS might have curropted or missing drivers for that chipset, which is why you would have to set it to IDE for it to be seen as a bootable drive.