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Blinking Underscore when Booting (and more)

Sirr
By Sirr
in CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory
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I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this but oh well. So a couple months ago, my dad got a SSD for his old system (it didn't have any storage drives for some reason) and I cloned my OS onto that SSD and put it into his pc. After resting it, the system worked fine until about 4 days ago. There was a storm, and the CPU fan would turn on for a little bit and turn off again. I took apart the system thinking it was a PSU problem. So I got a working PSU from a friend and tried booting the system, and got the same error. I spent about 6 hours working on this god-forsaken system. I took it out of the case thinking there was an issue with a short and nothing. That's when more problems arose. My dad said he needed to use a pc so I grabbed a different system and put the SSD on it. Got to the Dell booting screen and came back with what looks like a terminal window with a blinking white underscore. Great. I've tried booting from my own system and got the same thing. I am desperate need of help at this point. I'm out of ideas and motivation, so if you guys could help that would be great. (sorry for the long post)

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https://linustechtips.com/topic/809456-blinking-underscore-when-booting-and-more/
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Boot into Ubuntu from a USB and back up your files, then reinstall Windows. 

Gaming PC NAS Laptop Workstation

CPU: i5 12600KF 6P+4E Ryzen 7 3700X M4 SoC 4P+6E Xeon X5690 6c12t

Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S Wraith Stealth w/NF-A9 Passive Apple CPU Cooler

Motherboard: ASRock Z690 ITX/ax ASUS Pro B550M-C/CSM Apple J713AP Mac-F221BEC8 (Mac Pro 5,1)

RAM: 2x16GB 3600Mhz DDR4 2x16GB 2400MHz DDR4 24GB Micron LPDDR5 4x8GB 1333MHz ECC DDR3

GPU: Sapphire Pulse Radeon 9060 XT 16GB Radeon WX2100 M4 SoC 10C Radeon RX 5700

Storage: 1TB MP34 + 2TB P41 500GB SSD + 2x4TB IronWolf Pro in ZFS Mirror Apple AP0512Z 1TB Crucial MX500

ODD: LG WH14NS40 None LG GP65NB60 USB DVD Writer Don't know

PSU: EVGA 850W GM Silverstone SST-TX300 53.8Wh LiPo Battery Delta DPS-980BB

Case: Silverstone Sugo 14 Dell Inspiron 530S Mac16,12 chassis (13" MBA) 2009-2012 Mac Pro "Cheese Grater"

OS: Gentoo Linux TrueNAS Scale macOS 26 Tahoe Fedora Linux

 

Display: LG 27UK650-W (4K 60Hz IPS panel)

Mouse: EVGA X17

Keyboard: Corsair K55 RGB

 

Mobile/Work Devices: 14" M5P MacBook Pro (work) - iPhone 17 Pro - Apple Watch S11

 

Other Misc Devices: iPod Video (Gen 5.5E, iFlash Solo w/128GB SD Card, Rockbox), Nintendo Switch

 

Vehicles: 2002 Ford F150, 2003 Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200, 2022 Kawasaki KLR650, 1994 DR350SE

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Likely because your OS was used to different hardware, and you cloned it onto a machine with different hardware. Sometimes Windows (I'm assuming you're using Windows) just won't work with new hardware. As far as I know, all you can do here is reinstall WIndows. Maybe create a new partition to install it to, and try and get your data from the corrupted partition.

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Just now, LeinadTM said:

Likely because your OS was used to different hardware, and you cloned it onto a machine with different hardware. Sometimes Windows (I'm assuming you're using Windows) just won't work with new hardware. As far as I know, all you can do here is reinstall WIndows. Maybe create a new partition to install it to, and try and get your data from the corrupted partition.

Okay i'll try that. Thanks. Have any idea why my CPU fan would spin and shut off if its not the PSU?

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9 minutes ago, Sirr said:

Okay i'll try that. Thanks. Have any idea why my CPU fan would spin and shut off if its not the PSU?

The CPU fan always spins up on boot, then drops back to its idle speed after half a second. 

Gaming PC NAS Laptop Workstation

CPU: i5 12600KF 6P+4E Ryzen 7 3700X M4 SoC 4P+6E Xeon X5690 6c12t

Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S Wraith Stealth w/NF-A9 Passive Apple CPU Cooler

Motherboard: ASRock Z690 ITX/ax ASUS Pro B550M-C/CSM Apple J713AP Mac-F221BEC8 (Mac Pro 5,1)

RAM: 2x16GB 3600Mhz DDR4 2x16GB 2400MHz DDR4 24GB Micron LPDDR5 4x8GB 1333MHz ECC DDR3

GPU: Sapphire Pulse Radeon 9060 XT 16GB Radeon WX2100 M4 SoC 10C Radeon RX 5700

Storage: 1TB MP34 + 2TB P41 500GB SSD + 2x4TB IronWolf Pro in ZFS Mirror Apple AP0512Z 1TB Crucial MX500

ODD: LG WH14NS40 None LG GP65NB60 USB DVD Writer Don't know

PSU: EVGA 850W GM Silverstone SST-TX300 53.8Wh LiPo Battery Delta DPS-980BB

Case: Silverstone Sugo 14 Dell Inspiron 530S Mac16,12 chassis (13" MBA) 2009-2012 Mac Pro "Cheese Grater"

OS: Gentoo Linux TrueNAS Scale macOS 26 Tahoe Fedora Linux

 

Display: LG 27UK650-W (4K 60Hz IPS panel)

Mouse: EVGA X17

Keyboard: Corsair K55 RGB

 

Mobile/Work Devices: 14" M5P MacBook Pro (work) - iPhone 17 Pro - Apple Watch S11

 

Other Misc Devices: iPod Video (Gen 5.5E, iFlash Solo w/128GB SD Card, Rockbox), Nintendo Switch

 

Vehicles: 2002 Ford F150, 2003 Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200, 2022 Kawasaki KLR650, 1994 DR350SE

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