Underscores before windows will boot up

[shamankl]

Recently, I noticed that after the Asus logo splashes a set of underscores appear before the system would go and boot into my OS. I did some research on this and most of what i found was either concerning problems with even booting to windows or boot priority issues. However neither are what my problem is; my system has no problems automatically booting to windows and i have already made sure my boot 1 is the OS drive. Basically, after the bios splash screen, a blinking underscore would appear, then it would jump a line (think "enter" on a dos prompt), more blinking, then finally bring me to my windows start up. This is maybe 3 seconds total (I know it seems like something negligible, but I just want to make sure it will not become something big). I am wondering if anyone can tell me how to fix this blinking underscore problem or even what the problem is.

 

[dextermat]

Hi,

Usually happens when MBR corrupted, virus / trojan rootkit or a failing hard drive.

If you have another working computer, you might want to plug it in and scan for virus on the drive
Also download Hard disk sentinel trial to check the health of the drive

If the drive is clean, you need to put in your installation disk and do Bootrec.exe /mbrfix or Bootrec.exe /fixboot.
see instruction here ==> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

If the drive is failing, I suggest to backup and buy a new drive

Good luck
Although their are some chance it works or not

 

[lp231]

That blinking underscore is not a problem, so no need to worry too much.
If it takes forever, then it means there is a problem, like the Boot device is missing or corrupted.

 

[shamankl]

Thank you very much, I don't think it is a hard drive failure, just cause this is an ssd (should have mentioned that earlier). And, SSD tends to fail without too many symptoms. However, i will definitely scan for viruses and try to repair the Master Boot Record. tonight. Just wondering, would you happen to also know if an MBR can get corrupted from either a windows update or from uninstalling a certain anti-virus/malware product (as i think these are the last two things I did).

Hi,

Usually happens when MBR corrupted, virus / trojan rootkit or a failing hard drive.

If you have another working computer, you might want to plug it in and scan for virus on the drive
Also download Hard disk sentinel trial to check the health of the drive

If the drive is clean, you need to put in your installation disk and do Bootrec.exe /mbrfix or Bootrec.exe /fixboot.
see instruction here ==> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

If the drive is failing, I suggest to backup and buy a new drive

Good luck
Although their are some chance it works or not

 

[lp231]

No need to repair your MBR. Seriously that blinking underscore is not a problem. My has 2 of them from the 2 set of controllers my drives are plugged into. If you want, try disabling the boot delay time in bios from whatever seconds down to 0.
And what OS are you running? What is your system specs? If your SSD is somewhat partition with GPT, then there is no MBR to fix.

 

[shamankl]

Thank you very much for your reply (no idea how i missed your first one). I am seriously considering not doing the mbr repair as it seems like more can go wrong than right; truthfully, i really just want to find out what is causing it, especially if it is on the boot code side of things, instead of the mbr side of things, as that can be malicious (LOL maybe i should got a doctor and see if i am ocd instead). Though, mbrfix seems harmless enough to try since, it does not actually overwrite your current partition and instead does a second partition on the drive. The machine is win 8 updated to 8.1, so it may still be mbr and not guid, though i can probably just mount it and open a hex editor to check which one it is, if that is needed. I am running a 4770k with 8gb ram on a Asus maximus vi to a samsung 840 pro. I also have a wd black as a secondary drive.

 

[lp231]

First of all, nice system specs. To check if your HDD is running on GPT or MBR
1. Open command prompt with Administrator
2. Type Diskpart
3. Type List Disk
4. Look at where the * falls under. If it's GPT that * will be under GPT.

 

[shamankl]

Thanks, built the system myself a little while back. And definitely did not know that you could check the partition on windows through command line. Lucky guess, the drive was mbr after all (there was no * under gpt or dynamic for my disk 0).

I think ill do a virus scan tonight then a fixmbr. If that works great, if not blinking terminal can just stare me to death every time i turn it on. Fixboot is just too much of a risk seeing that the windows partition is already bootable. Thank you very much for your assistance so far lp231 and dextermat.