Black screen with blinking under dash

Question

Level 1

8 points

Black screen with blinking under dash

I was attempting to install windows 7 onto my macbook pro when one of the installation processess "expanding files" seemed to have froze (stayed at 0% for a good 25 mins), so I then tried cancelling the entire installation, but that also decided to take forever. So being the impatient bafoon that I am, I forced shutdown by holding down the power button. Upon start up, I initially get a blank white screen with no apple logo and a transition into a black screen with a blinking underdash on the top left corner (the type that shows you where you are currently typing). After long periods of waiting to see if anything else will happen and a number of restarts, it insists on staying on this black screen :/

Any suggestions as to how I might go about fixing this problem? Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Dec 20, 2011 8:18 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 20, 2011 8:30 PM in response to LuffyDC

were you installing windows 7 to bootcamp or to a virtual machine program like parrallels ?

if you are powerd off currently - can you hold down the shift key and see if while holding down the shift key and powering on - you need to hold down the shift key until your computer boots to login window displaying safe mode - doing this allows you to boot into safe mode - here is the article about doing this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1564

if that doesnt work - see if when you are powered off - if you hold down the option key while powering on if it will then show you boot disk options for you to choose from- you'd then elect the disk that is the mac os and hit enter once selected to boot into it

please let me know how the above goes

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Answer 2

Shootist007

Level 6

16,709 points

Dec 20, 2011 8:35 PM in response to LuffyDC

I suspect your system is stuck bootinging to the Win 7 boot camp partition, which is what it is supposed to do while you're installing Win 7.

Just hold down the Option key while turning the system on. You will get a screen where you can select the Startup Disk. Select Macintosh HD. System should boot back into OS X.

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Answer 3

LuffyDC Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 21, 2011 8:15 AM in response to Shootist007

Worked like a charm, thanks!

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