When booting my computer all I get is a black screen with a blinking underscore

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My computer (laptop) has dual boot with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14 (14.10 I believe).

Yesterday everything was working fine. I was on Ubuntu and I wanted to move PlayOnLinux to another partition to have more space on my Linux partition so while checking my partitions' format and I found a partition that Linux categorized as "Free space". So I grabbed it and gave it Linux format. Later I remembered that when I created my Linux partition on windows a while ago, there was this free partition that, if I recall correctly, windows didn't let me change.

So everything was fine after that, more disk space. Then I turned off my computer and this morning I turned it on. The ASUS logo appeared and right after that, a white blinking underscore appeared on the top left of a black screen, no GRUB.

My guess is I must have messed up the computer when formatting that partition. Here are the things I've tried:

  • F1-12: only F2 works (BIOS) and F4 (ASUS tek easy flash utility, with pretty much nothing on it)
  • Hitting spacebar as if it were a F key (read it somewhere over the internet): nothing happened
  • I've tried forcing boot from HDD from the BIOS but it goes back too the underscore screen.
  • I placed a W.Vista recovery CD (because hell knows why I made a Vista recovery CD and not a w7 one) and it loads the recovery program correctly (I cancelled it, want to try if I can get w7 back).
  • I can't find my Linux installation DVD so I haven't tried that.

Some computer info:
W7/Ubuntu 14 dual boot
ASUS K53SJ
iCore i5 (does that even help?)
A few years old

As with most laptops, no Windows 7 installation DVD came with it.

Jurcan

Posted 2015-05-11T09:55:52.877

Reputation: 41

Might want to try http://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/ it has worked for me when I have done these types of things...

– Dean Spicer – 2015-05-11T14:14:24.840

It worked! I was about to use EFI but since this seemed more simple I tried it, both Windows and Ubuntu are now bootable. I have one question: should I delete everything I put into that partition, should I not touch it or can I keep using it? – Jurcan – 2015-05-11T17:18:21.163

I'm not too sure. When you are in Ubuntu your Windows partitions might look like empty space. I would recommend leaving partitions alone unless you know exactly what is on them. With a dual boot system it is a bit trickier because of the different file systems and whatnot. – Dean Spicer – 2015-05-11T18:29:38.643

Answers

2

It's likely you have formatted your EFI boot partition, if your motherboard supports it. On the specification page for your Ultrabook I cannot find any information on whether it uses EFI, but it's likely that it does.

You may wish to try the rEFInd Boot Manager as suggested in this answer (by the tool's own author), but if that does not work you must reinstall either Windows or Linux, to your preference.

If you can get hold of a Windows installation disk, you can browse the partitions to find out exactly what you did, but as mentioned earlier it's likely that you wiped the EFI boot partition.

AStopher

Posted 2015-05-11T09:55:52.877

Reputation: 2 123

3The BIOS has a "Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device" which leads to a "Not found" warning message, so you're probably right. I will try this rEFInd Boot Manager and inform about the result. – Jurcan – 2015-05-11T10:50:32.630

Asked: 2015-05-11T09:55:52.877

Viewed: 1 171 times

Active: 2017-04-09T14:20:26.763