all I see is a blinking courser after selecting my drive

[Olaf]

all I see is a blinking courser after selecting my drive; that is as descriptive as my level of boot manager knowledge allows.

Plop has been working great for nearly a year, and a couple minutes ago I accidentally selected to boot from the wrong  drive - it is not actually a drive, each of my drives has a second option that I never select until now - and after a restart and selecting my drive, all I get is a courser. My backup default drive boots fine and is where I am now.

[vesalocal]

Did you try the search function?  I got a number of hits using "BLINKING CURSOR"...

And it may be really helpful to tell us what OS you are using and how your configuration
looks like!

[Olaf]

yes, OS and configuration is nice, the build sheet is here
http://cife.stanford.edu/wiki/doku.php?id=cee241:software:settings:tower

I will try the search function again, search got me here - the plop - forum, and I stopped there. What domain was your search for "BLINKING CURSOR" within forum.pop.at all I found was this thread. I will tried a broader search for WIN7 "BLINKING CURSOR"and found this http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/8371-No-boot-blank-screen-and-blinking-cursor

New question: why did my OS get corrupted from selecting the plop file boot rather than my drive boot?

[vesalocal]

I will try the search function again, search got me here - the plop - forum, and I stopped there. What domain was your search for "BLINKING CURSOR" within forum.pop.at all I found was this thread.

I meant the search function on the upper right corner of _this_ page.
Go to  Plop Forum > General Category > Plop Boot Manager
and try a search again.

New question: why did my OS get corrupted from selecting the plop file boot rather than my drive boot?

As far as I remember there was an issue with this topic...
Now you should be able to find it!

[Dan]

Uh oh...do you get the message, "The bootsector is the MBR"?

May need to run testdisk to fix the partition table.

[Olaf]

First, thank you vesalocal for your direction in where to research this problem - my search is greatly better targeted

But, after reading the plop threads about blinking courser, I now have a headache and have thoughts about various OS systems and plop installs that went sideways

Also, I searched the Win7 forums but the solutions there rely on F10 Bios reset to defaults and F8 repairs.

For my level of understanding the plop forum solutions are either too detailed or I do not have the context to generalize the solution to apply to my specific scenario. And, the Win7 solutions do not apply since I think it is the plop manager that has lost where Windows is installed not the windows bootmanager; if necessary I can test this by removing my SATA drive cable and booting directly from the PCI drive.

More information:
Normally I boot from my SATA drive, which has the plop boot manager installed, the windows boot manager opens and I select either the plop boot manager or the WIN7 OS on that drive.
Then, in Plop I select my PCI drive that is labeled HDC Partition 1 and Win7 starts
Last Friday I accidentally selected HDB Partition 2, I have no idea what this is, I think it is the plop boot manager
And, since then HDC Partition 1 will not boot
HDA Partition 1 works fine and directs back to the SATA drive windows boot manager

Until this is resolved I am dead in the water and cannot work on my experiment setup - my software is on the PCI drive

Nice, just read this while waiting for a reply to this post, and it sounds eerily familiar
Plop Boot Manager 5.0.13 released, New tool: plpbt4win, Boot manager updates: plpbt.bin HDA partition 2 boot bugfix: This was a strange bug. On the most PC's it was not reproduceable. On one reported PC it freezes the computer. On a few other PC's it removes the partition entry in the MBR. I was never able to reproduce the bug, however, its fixed now.
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmngrusblog.html

I had help installing Plop on my machine, and by the time we were done I had no clue what we were doing - simply pressing the keys as marc said too - so I am not looking forward to repeating the process. Also, the boot manager does not have my third drive (the current configuration is leftover from when it was in my laptop, not even sure why Plop recognizes the PCI drive in my tower, I must have reconfigured it at sometime), and x32 Server 2003 with some legacy applications. I should add the third drive to plop boot manager as an option and maybe this is  a good time to update to 5.0.13. Is there instruction for changing to 5.0.13 when the plpbt.bin HDA partition 2 boot bug is in effect?

I created a new thread since this is a bug and no longer a 'blinking curser' issue
http://forum.plop.at/index.php/topic,1357.0.html

[Elmar]

hi,
how do you start the plop boot manager?

regards
elmar

[Olaf]

I boot from my SATA drive, which has the plop boot manager installed, the windows boot manager opens and I select the plop boot manager

[Elmar]

I boot from my SATA drive, which has the plop boot manager installed, the windows boot manager opens and I select the plop boot manager

in your situation, the easiest to update to 5.0.13 is start plpbt4win. use "l" to list the entries of your windows boot menu. remove the old plop boot manager entry with "r ID". then quit with "q". then run the batch file "InstallToBootMenu"

[Olaf]

Thank you, I will change to 5.0.13

[Olaf]

Changed to 5.0.13:

HDA Partition 1 Win7 x64 boot #1 w/ plop manager
HDB Partition 1 ??
HDC Partition 1 XP x32 OS (was my PCI drive)

HD* Partition 1 PCI-E Win7 x64 primary partition not found by plop

Changed the boot sequence to PCI-E drive boot #1; and restarted - blinking curser
Checked computer management storage disk management - the PCI-E drive System reserved partition is represented as unallocated - the primary partition is healthy; I can access the PCI-E drive files while booted to the Win7 x64 drive.

I have the DVD drive and Windows DVD prepared for the repair but do not want to go further without confirming first that this is the correct path to follow.

In the meantime I will research with web searches "win7 boot partition lost"
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/f/3524/p/19368642/19837340.aspx
http://www.sevenforums.com/installation-setup/165348-how-can-i-recover-my-lost-windows-7-partition-after-installing-ubuntu.html this one resolved it with testdisk - same as what Dan suggested, that is two for testdisk

Testdisk scan results http://granite.web.stanford.edu/plop_testDisk.jpg

I will continue to bounce along but do not want to do much more with the testdisk features without guidance here.

[Olaf]

Disk partition http://granite.web.stanford.edu/plop_computerManagement.jpg

I selected try and locate partition http://granite.web.stanford.edu/plop_testDiskRecover.jpg ; what do I do?

And reading this guide http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html?ltr=S

[Olaf]

Now reading this one (yup, I am starting to mess things up) http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/itprovistasetup/thread/af3a1e24-214f-4e0e-b917-9530a27534de/

I tried the windows DVD but the only viable options were a fresh install or image recovery

Try: complete disk scan and recovery of bad sectors - did not correct the issue

Try http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Support

[Elmar]

we fix this in a chat. do not run any repair programs. you maybe destroy something. download the latest plop linux.

[Olaf]

 the latest plop linux is downloaded

TestDisk reviewed the log file and sent these instructions: "After Analyse and Quick Search, choose Write, confirm, Quit (not the little cross) and restart your computer." Lets see what happens.

[Elmar]

channel #plop1
http://webchat.freenode.net/

[Olaf]

OK, at webchat - I do not hear anything or see a text box

[Elmar]

OK, at webchat

you are not answering on the webchat

[Olaf]

webchat apparently is beyond my computing ability 

I see "[10:06] <@_elmar> hello?" how did you type that

Guessing you cannot hear me either, all I hear is my Tinnitus

I am using firefox 4.0 and there are not an input field or ">"

[Olaf]

[SOLVED]

Successful path to solution:
Loaded latest plop, ran TestDisk, sent the log file in for review, text chat with Elmar for guidance, and in TestDisk "After Analyse and Quick Search, choose Write, confirm, Quit (not the little cross) and restarted computer."

Typing this from my now resurrected drive.