When I powered on my PC, it displayed a black screen with a small white line near the upper-left corner. Unplugging my external hard drive and restarting didn't help. Resetting the BIOS settings briefly allowed the computer to start, but Windows then reported that a driver needed repair and asked to restart. Since restarting, the same black screen and white line appear, and resetting the BIOS no longer fixes it. I also can't reach the Windows Recovery Environment and don't have a System Restore point. Is there anything else I can try, or is professional repair the next step?
3 Answers
This sounds more like a Windows boot problem than an issue with the external drive. Enter the BIOS and check whether your internal system drive is detected and listed as the first boot device. If it isn’t detected, shut the PC down and reseat the drive’s power and data cables, or reseat the M.2 drive if that’s what you use. If the drive is detected, create a Windows installation USB from another computer and use its Repair your computer option to run Startup Repair. From the same tools, you can try System Restore or Command Prompt repairs. Avoid reinstalling Windows until you’ve backed up any important files.
The white line may simply be the blinking boot cursor, which means the firmware is starting but no usable bootloader is being found. Disconnect all unnecessary USB devices, confirm the correct drive is selected in the boot order, and make sure the BIOS is using the same UEFI or legacy mode that Windows was installed with. If the drive is detected but still won’t boot, use a Windows installer USB to repair the boot records. If important photos or documents are on the drive, copy them off with a live Linux USB or connect the drive to another computer before attempting major repairs.
If Startup Repair won’t load, boot from a Windows installation USB rather than trying to trigger recovery from the damaged installation. Open Command Prompt there and first identify the Windows partition, since it may not be assigned the usual C: letter. You can then run a disk check and offline system-file repair. If the drive is missing from both the BIOS and the installer, the drive or its connection may have failed rather than Windows simply being corrupted.
I tried getting into the recovery tools but couldn’t make them appear, and I don’t have a restore point. I’ll check whether the system drive is visible in the BIOS and try booting from a Windows USB.