Pretty sure I just fucked my Desktop up for life

[Lucavi]

Ol' Luc stepped in it big time this time. This is lifted from another forum I'm on, but the issue is identical.

I'll give as much information as I can. I have a partitioned PC that never really worked 100% right, but "worked", so I never worried about it. A pc-building friend built my windows 7 rig with a partition to allow for me to carry over the memory on an old harddrive without mucking up a my new one. The original problem was that the partition caused my boot up to always have a black screen until the windows welcome screen came up. That was the only known issue, so I always ignored it. Running a second monitor never solved the problem, as both would be black until start up, and the second would mirror the first. I never worried about it because I was never a perfectionist, and it always worked flawlessly once the windows screen came up.

Flash forward to tonight. I wanted to run safe mode to run my CCE scanner without interference from any other program, as something in the background was causing it to close out shortly after running a scan. After a few attempts at the old standard method of holding or clicking F8, I started to get frustrated as the screen was always black, and would load normally, so I did the most bone-headed thing I've ever done.

Using the Windows button + R command, I went into system config and set the boot options to boot into safe mode automatically. You can imagine what my issue now is. Every time I turn the computer on, it always remains at that black screen. I can't tell if it's booting to safe mode or not, as there's no sound, so I've effectively paralyzed my computer - hopefully not permanently.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Is it possible to revert that change when I have nothing but a black screen (any plugged in monitor directly goes into power-save mode), or have I screwed this PC over forever?

[orinthia]

I have a partitioned PC that never really worked 100% right, but "worked", so I never worried about it. A pc-building friend built my windows 7 rig with a partition to allow for me to carry over the memory on an old harddrive without mucking up a my new one.

What does this mean? The normal way to deal with setting up windows is to first let the windows installer do its thing to a fresh, unformatted disk so that it can create the necessary partitions for boot stuff (it makes a couple very small hidden partitions for this, so it's always best to start fresh). Afterward, you can go and resize your main partition from inside windows to create more drives if you want to. Forcing your own partitions during a win vista/7/+ install is usually bad (was fine for win xp and less).

You can also use your win 7 disc to boot into recovery, here's a link with some info on it: http://malwaretips.com/blogs/fix-computer-wont-start/
If you have win7 with sp1 installed, you'll need a win7 w/sp1 install disc to attempt recovery. You can legally download the isos straight from microsoft via digitalriver's servers if you don't have one handy. If it doesn't help, put the hdd into another comp, copy what you want to save, and reformat it.

[Lucavi]

I'll have to get in touch with the guy and ask how he did it. I wasn't there when he did the partition, as I'm a guy who doesn't sweat the small stuff so long as shit works in the end. He builds PCs by the dozen nowadays, but this job was done years ago,so I'm not sure either way. I just know that its always been a black screen on boot, until the windows welcome screen popped on.

I'll try all of those, thank you.

[Sonomaa]

ok, two ways to fix this, one guarantees it working, the other is a bit of a crapshoot.

1: reload windows, youve very obviously fucked up your boot loader, this is the actual safe method of just wiping shit and starting over so it doesnt happen again

2: repair the master boot record and rebuild it so your win7 partition is the primary one and it boots directly into that one
http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus...ebuild-mbr.htm
this program Ive used to resize partitions before, it might work for you but Im not 100% sure.

good luck man

[Lucavi]

We figured it out: plopping in a third monitor revealed the coveted hidden boot process! Apparently, the way the GFX card is set up, windows likes to run itself on monitor port A, while the boot system (and safe mode) wants to run from Port C. Plugging in 3 monitors allowed me to revert my previous adjustments from safe mode. When I upgrade the rig again, I'm going to set everything to run on the same port.

Thank you for the help! No raid time will be missed!

Now to figure why CCE likes to close randomly...

[The Stig]

Haha i was going to suggest more monitors but usually that's hard to procure these days unless you know people nearby that can lend you one, I can't believe you found a third one to plop in. Great to hear.

[Scizor]

I think you should back up everything you want to keep and start again, properly this time...