Flashing Underscore On Startup
Apr 28, 2011
Recently did a new build, it's a couple months old now. Today I noticed that in between my MSI BIOS logo screen and the Win7 booting animation I get a flashing underscore on a black screen for maybe a second. I know this is a noob question but is this something normal I've just never noticed? The last time I saw something like this the system would only boot to a blinking underscore because the drive failed and I needed to replace it, so I'm a bit paranoid.
Mobo- MSI 890fx-GD70
CPU- Phenom II X4 970 (overclocked to 3.8 via multiplier only)
Ram- 8GB Crucial Ballistix ddr3 1333 (not overclocked)
HDD- Seagate 500GB Barracuda boot drive
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Jul 15, 2012
Recently I got this problem on my Acer Aspire 5742G where my laptop gets stuck on black screen with a flashing underscore at the top left corner right after the Acer splash screen. I can get into Bios but I can't get into safe mode (normally I could press F8 to get into Advanced Boot Options but this no longer works).
The problem started when I decided to try out Windows 8 Preview a few days ago. I managed to set up dual boot windows 7 home premium/windows 8 preview and it worked fine. But I only gave 20GB to the windows 8 partition and I decided I needed more. I thought it's a simple matter to transfer space by shrinking the volume of the win7 partition, format the new unallocated space and extend the volume of the win8 partition. But after I did this, all the partitions apart from the recovery one became "simple partitions" instead of "primary partitions". I don't know the difference between the two terms and I didn't think it was a problem so I just turned off the laptop once I finished with it. The next time I turned it on the problem started. Could this have caused problems with the hard drive? It's the only thing I can think of that caused the problem.
Unfortunately I can't find my recovery disc either.
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Jul 22, 2012
I encountered this problem two days ago while using my computer (hp pavilion elite) and it sht off on it's own. I tried to restart and it won't boot windows. Just a black screen with a flashing cursor at the top. I searched all over these forums and haven't found a solution that works. So far I have done a restore point, tried to reinstall windows from a recovery disk, I've used command prompt to Fix the boot record. Diagnostics says my hard drive is fine and I can see the newly installed windows 7 on my hard drive via the recovery disk boot. But when I try to boot from hard drive it still goes black.
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Nov 22, 2011
I tried to shut down my Dell inspiron when it said it needed to update some things and not to turn it off. Without realizing it I pushed the off button and now, everytime I try to turn it on it just shows the Dell logo and then the windows logo and goes to q black screen with a flashing underscore in the top left
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Oct 21, 2012
Today I started up my pc and after the BIOS screen (the place where you can press f8-f11 for various options) it went to a black screen with a blinking underscore in the upper left corner and stayed there indefinitely. It did this even after reboot.
I tried using the diagnostic tool and everything it tested passed (including HDD). I did this test twice and the same results were produced.
I also googled for similar problems (one topic mentioned that the op disassembling his computer and physically tapping a chip on the motherboard caused it to work) but I have no experience with taking apart my computer and i do not want to break it accidentally. I did however chance upon a topic advising him to do a CMOS reset which apparently helped that op, so i looked through the various options on the BIOS page. There was one option (f10 I think) mentioning CMOS on its fourth sub-window, so i pressed the reset option but I'm mot entirely sure if I used the right function.
I uninstalled kaspersky pure and replaced kaspersky pure for kaspersky anti-virus yesterday, dont know if this was the cause. I am using windows 7 64 bit.
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Aug 31, 2011
I am having a major issue with my laptop! First, here are the specs:
HP G60 Notebook PC
Windows 7 home premium
Pentium Dual Core T4300
Total Memory 3072 MB
BIOS version F.53
Just recently i got a virus and since i dont have much money i didn't have protection. I used my system restore to get past it (not the first time i had to do this). I dont remember if i was able to use the laptop after that or not, but it was only a day later that i noticed the laptop wouldn't boot into the OS selection screen (I had Ubuntu installed also, so i had to select between that and windows 7). At any rate, i will press the power button, then it has a screen that shows HP's logo, then changes to a blank screen with a blinking white underscore in the top left of the screen.I reset, then pressed ESC immediately on start and ran a few tests by selecting "System Diagnostics" which is selected by using the F2 key.
100 percent of system memory tested OK
Hard Disk passed Quick Scan
Hard Disk passed Full scan
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Aug 10, 2011
I upgraded my pc yesterday and reinstalled Windows 7. Now on the starting Windows screen I have a little underscore blinking in the top left corner of the screen.
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Oct 24, 2011
I have a Pendo U1000 that runs windows 7 starter. i get past the pendo start screen, but stops at a blinking line. this is before the windows 7 icon appears. its a netbook with no cd rom drive, i have no start up usb or anything to use. last shutdown was normal?
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May 25, 2011
But, IE8 is giving me underscores on all file names when I download a file - how do I revert to spaces with no underscores?
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Dec 14, 2011
About two hours I was doing a recover in my hd (with Acronis true Image 2010) when at 1/3 of the process the computer rebooted. I thought it was normal, but soon after the image of the motherboard appeard, a blinking underscore emerged and the boot does not proceeded. I have tried changing the boot to dvd and hd (in the bios), also I tried to put the windows disk but the option to boot from cd does not appears. ie, the PC starts, the image of the motherboard appears and then immediately the undersore flashing.
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Sep 29, 2012
i have a acer aspire 5336-2460 laptop, everytime i try to boot into windows it gets stuck at a black screen with a blinking underscore in the top left. I tried making a bootable Windows 7 dvd and it still doesn't solve the issue. F8 won't work only F2 and F12.
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Sep 1, 2012
I have an HP laptop that upon boot-up would show the HP logo and then go to a constant blinking underscore on the upper left hand corner. During the HP logo screen, I pressed f2 to enter "HP Startup" where I scan the hard drive and it passed all the test. Also I can go into the BIOS by pressing f10.
From my research, I changed the order of boot-up and put local hard drive at the very top. I also unplugged the battery. And laptop is still not working. I also read that perhaps putting in a System Repair Disk might work(?) But I just discover that my cd-rom drive is not working. What would be the best way/ or my options in going about to recovering my data?
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Aug 4, 2011
A few days ago I made a clean wipe on my Toshiba laptop, and installed Windows 7 Home Premium x86 as my OS. After installing the OS on my laptop, I proceeded to let windows update check for automatic updates and install them. After installing some updates, I clicked to have my computer reboot. After rebooting it showed the Toshiba screen with the F2, F12 options but after that it goes straight to a black screen with a white underscore. I pressed the power button to turn off then back on my computer and proceeded to press first F2 but it went back to the black screen with a white underscore, then restarted again pressing F12 went to the black screen again, restarted one more time pressing F8 for safe mode but nothing works.
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Sep 8, 2009
I was installing Windows 7 onto my laptop (previously vista) and install seemed to run smoothly (went past asking about. PC name, network etc) but after it said it was preparing for first startup, nothing boots. After restarting.. besides the startup Acer screen, there is only a black screen with a blinking underscore at the top left. Whats happening :S?
I've tried F2 and running a setup but it just shows me some specs and such
Btw it has 2.0 Ghz + 2GB ram x__x
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Sep 9, 2010
I just upgraded to Windows 7 on my Toshiba Satellite Special Edition laptop that came with Vista 64bit and the other night i downloaded iTunes 10 and told me to restart my machine so I clicked ok and then my laptop shut off and when it came back on the Toshiba screen came up as usual but seemed to stay on longer than normal then it goes to a black screen with a underscore that blinks for a few moments then becomes solid. Ive tried to use the "F" keys to get different boot options because i have the windows 7 ISO disc and a ubuntu disc that I could use but whatever i try my laptop wont process it just does the same thing over and over again and bever proceeds to the actually boot up windows.
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Sep 30, 2011
I first noticed FF flashing when version 7.0 was released, it's still the same in version 7.0.1. Only page I found so far is The Beginner's Guide to Using QoS (Quality of Service) on Your Router - How-To Geek It is ok using IE9.
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Oct 12, 2009
how do you flash a bios for a motherboard using a usb?? I have an Asus P5KPL-CM and need the lastest bios cause it fixers a problem i have with my audio....
if someone could let me know how to go about this i wound be ever so greatful
NOTE: I have the right bios file.... I have no Floppy drive.
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May 16, 2009
i never flashed bios before and have recently noticed there is an update on the Acer web site. The bios mine is running on at the minute is R01-B3 and the new one is R01-B4.
Is it worth updating to the new one?
Will Win 7 take to it?
What will be the benefits of the newly released bios over the one I have?
How do I go about doing it and are there any safety precautions I could take so I can roll back incase I F it up?
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Nov 16, 2009
I have never done this before. My computer is two years old. Is this something that should be done every so often or does it need to be done before I install .
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Oct 15, 2009
I'm currently running a GeForce 7900 GT/GTO card that I've never had problems with. I updated the drivers for Windows 7 from NVIDIA's site.
However, whenever I go to switch display settings, open a video, open a picture, or just about anything else graphically intense (including start-up) my screen freaks out. The screen will go a solid color (of whatever the background is), get lines through it, and then start flashing. Then after 10-20 seconds (or whenever the program I was trying to run is finished) it will revert back to normal.
I can run Aero just fine. I can run normal programs such as the internet browser, control panel, etc. fine as well. It's just whenever I try changing my display settings or running a video, opening a picture, etc.
Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be the problem? I've run GPU-Z and my card isn't overheating either I don't believe.
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Sep 19, 2011
I have this weird thing going on in my laptop. On any program a drop down menu will appear and then starts scrolling down. It's like flashing cursor and not letting me type anything. It happens for all programs, whether I try to save a file or try to type a command in run. Even when I try to open a small sized notepad and try to scroll it down, it goes back up automatically and not coming to the end. Is there some kind of virus or an intruder/trojan hunter?Already tried running MS virus scanner. alkaparikh has chosen the best answer to his/her question.Click here to view the answer that was selected.
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Nov 9, 2012
Wonder if anyone could help or provide some ideas.I'm trying to get my spare laptop to work.Every time I turn it on it just boots to a flashing cursor on a black screen.The hard drive in it is new - without windows 7 installed yet.I've tried booting from my windows 7 disk. Set optical drive to first in boot order. Just goes to flashing cursor, does not say "press any key to boot from cd" Tried booting from usb. Set usb hard drive to first in boot order. same as above.Mem test says ram is ok, reports cpu and ram amount in bios ok Laptop is hp compaq nc6320
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Oct 6, 2009
I've been using Windows 7 build 7100 happily for the past 6 months. But recently it develops a weird problem: The application window (like IE, firefox, outlook, explorer) flash quickly. I can see "Not responding" displayed in the title in between the each flash. I have Quad proc + 6GB memory, so the system slowness should not be a problem. The flash happens quite often, when I scroll down the screen, or typing, or have some user interaction with the application. I've disabled Aero interface, no help. I did Windows update, no help. Someone recommends removing nVidia driver, I did not try, as I have been using the same driver for the past 6 months without problem. I've installed Windows Security Essentials recently. But disabling it does not work either. Why do the flash start to happen recently?
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Jan 31, 2012
on a few certain site, like facebook, twitter, classic yahoo mail the screen erratically flashes
i keep my PC switched on for days on end, i'm also logged onto these sites, but sometimes i get the screen flashing, nothing i can do to stop it unless i restart my PC and it's fine until it starts again, it can be a day, to a few days
i think it may be facebook, as when i'm not on this site, it seems to be fine.
do you think it's a flash problem or something else i've just uninstalled flash & reinstalled to see if it's going to help
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Aug 23, 2012
i recently had to reinstall 7, because the computer kept crashing in the middle of the simplest things. say, i'd be reading a wikipedia article, or watching a Internet video, or playing a game, and the screen would all of the sudden start flashing for a few seconds, then it would just go black (70% of the time.) on occasion, it wouldn't go black, but instead becomes the color of the most prevalent color on the screen. ex: i was playing a game, and took a look at the map, which was mostly yellow. at that moment the screen would become yellow and freeze, not letting me move my mouse or ctrl+alt+del. sometimes a blue crash screen would appear, sometimes it would just restart on its own.so, anyway, i realize reinstalling windows has little to do with the above problem, but i was hoping it would fix it, and also i needed a new start, since my organizational skills were pretty bad before. once reinstalled, i had updated almost everything possible, via windows update, or manually.at first, i thought my wishes were fulfilled, because my pc was running faster and more smoothly than ever before. (i did have a little hiccup with sound card, but that's behind me now.) but, no. the black screen happened again today. that was such a low blow i wanted to jump off the balcony... i decided that the only thing i haven't updated was the bios, and, true, it was last updated in august 2010, 3 months before i got this pc. that hasn't helped one bit - screen's still flashing and freezing.
also, i've just noticed that after a few flashes the computer doesn't freeze at first, but the mouse pointer either disappears altogether or becomes thin vertical dotted line. but it still freezes after a few minutes. that's something new, but not an improvement. hopefully that helps you.[code] a quick flash or two, mouse pointer becomes a dotted line, and screen goes white (doesn't happen a lot, but has before) after 1-2 minutes. i was running 16-bit true color this time, but apparently that makes no difference.
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Dec 1, 2011
I have put a SSD as my main drive. Running Windows 7 64-bit. I am now concerned that Windows 7 will wear this drive out as the drive light flashes constantly about 1-2 times per second. What could it possibly be doing sitting idle.
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Jul 19, 2012
I've always wanted to know why even when my computer is shut down & completely off that the Netgear router is still going crazy flashing like there is activity? Well if there is activity what is it?
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Feb 20, 2011
System is Windows 7 home 64 bit with amd athlon II 255 Processor 3.10 GHz and 4gb of ram. Avast anti-virus. I have windows firewall on, but haven't really made any other changes.My cursor flashes the busy symbol about once every 4-5 seconds, and it does so whenever the mouse is on the desktop or anywhere it shows the regular icon. When inside this text window it changes to the text cursor and ceases to flash, however. I changed the icon only to have the new one act the same.
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Aug 11, 2011
my son has a toashiba satellite pro L450D-12x it goes past set up screen then to a blank screen (in black ) with a flashing line in the left corner how can i get it to load properley? before it did this it said media cable fail or something like that and i restored bios back to restore settings and it was also turning itsself off now and again.
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Sep 29, 2012
Since a couple of weeks I have had this really annouing problem with Flashing horizontal stripes on my second monitor, i can guarantee that these are not hardware problems, the stripes do not appear when i open a program on full screen, so basically they ONLY appear on the desktop background.
Here is a link to a video of the stripes:
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Feb 23, 2011
This morning one of our computers started acting strangely. Any window screens we have open, whether an Internet Explorer window, My Computer screen, etc, the top bars are flashing in and out. It is similar to the flashing like when it is trying to alert you of an error message / box you have to click through to do something else. The home screen is fine, and shows no signs of flashing or flickering, it only shows on any window screens you have open. It will interrupt you when you are trying to open drop down menus etc as well. I have gone into screen resolution, but as soon as I open a drop down box, it will close as soon as the screen flashes again. However I was able to change the resolution to a lower setting, but it still flashed. I also tried to change the screen refresh rate, but there was only one option to choose, 60 hertz. The computer is an Acer Laptop, running Windows 7 and AVG Antivirus, but I dont have any other exact specs on it right now as im working from a different computer. My mother said it had updated last night with a possible new Windows update? Again the back / desktop screen appears fine, it just seems to affect any windows you have open.
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