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This journal entry has been tagged with:

• Technology
• SD Card
• Memory Stick Pro Duo
• SanDisk
• Computer
• Blinky Cursor Screen
• Death
• Reformat
• Guide

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A quick disclaimer before I start. If you do not care about technical jargon, close the window and come back next time.

The following are some of my more recent technology frustrations.

SanDisk media cards. Over the past couple weeks I've been helping my mom set up her digital picture frame she received for Christmas (I know, I've been busy). We set out to Best Buy to purchase some SanDisk SD cards to use in her picture frame, these cards were a supported type so I didn't forsee any issues. We purchased two 2GB SD cards and brought them home. I took them out of the packaging and put them directly into her Dell Photo Printer. The printer shot out an error explaining that this card was not a supported type, even though it says so in the owner's manual. After quite a bit of research into the issues I found out that high capacity SD cards (greater than 1GB) have the following problem:

"The SD Card Association's current specifications define how a standard SD (non-SDHC) card with more than 1 GB and up to 4 GB capacity should be designed. These cards should be readable in any SD 1.01 devices that take the block length data into account. Any 1 GB or lesser card should always work. (So the key question is how one's reader handles block length).

According to the specification,[15] the maximum capacity of a standard SD card is defined by (BLOCKNR x BLOCK_LEN), where BLOCKNR may be (4096 x 512) and BLOCK_LEN may be up to 2048. This allows a capacity of 4 GB. The main problem is that some of the card readers support only a block (aka. sector) size of 512 bytes, so greater than 1 GB non-SDHC cards may cause compatibility difficulties for some users. "
-Secure Digital Card - Wikipedia.org

Based on this finding I ended up having my mom return the cards several hours later as the cards did not work in either of the 2 card readers that were present onboard the printers they have at home.

Now I thought my problems were long over when my mom purchased the SanDisk Memory Stick Pro Duo card 2GB to replace the SD cards. Seeing that her current 1GB worked perfectly fine via the Memory Stick Pro Adaptor in the printer I didn't anticipate any issues. I took one picture and put it into that Dell Printer and everything was working just fine. Then... Poltergeist.

The printer LCD started flickering saying 2 memory cards were inserted and the removable drive disappeared off the computer. Upon removing the card and trying in the same camera that took a picture on it, it no longer worked. I tried in a different camera and I received the same error - C:13:01.

Again I began research and found out that SanDisk Memory Stick Pro Duo cards are prone to this error in Sony cameras and the only way to fix the issue is re-formatting the memory card. This is exceedingly difficult when neither camera or the computer can recognize the card. Most Sony cameras have the option of formatting the media directly on the camera, however when the card is unreadable you cannot format it. How stupid is that. I found some very novel solutions like the "squeeze and bend technique" where you squeeze the edges of the SD card from all angles and then try using it. Also, the "eraser technique" where you take your ordinary lead pencil eraser and go to town on the gold metal contacts until they "look like new." All these rudimentary techniques were tried to no avail and I will inevitable return this card for a Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo. Hopefully spending the extra few bucks will save me an extra few hours... we'll see.

On the same day as the memory card issues, my computer died... again.

My computer has a special place in its heart for the "blinky cursor screen" which appears immediately after POST. This is the stage when the computer has finished performing all the internal hardware checks and shifts over to booting to the OS. It should only consist of a microsecond in the computer's thought process to enable this transition, but for me it turned into a black blinking void of ignorance. This is not the first time I've had this issue at or around this screen. This day marked the 3rd incident in 6 months where my computer ultimately gave up and threw up a blinking white flag saying euthanize me.

My financial sense destroyed everything on the computer and built it back from the ground up. I'm currently almost back to 100%. I'm getting fairly used to the process of rebuilding my computer from a situation such as this. Whatever the case I've made a trouble-shooting guide for this issue and the steps that should be taken to resolve it in the event some other unfortunate soul stumbles onto this issue. Justin - You can comment this if you feel I'm missing anything important.

Causes of Blinky Cursor of Death:
• Boot sector error
• Master Boot Record error
• Hard Drive Malfunction
• Hard Drive Death
• Processor Death
• Motherboard Death
• Computer Death

Solutions for Blinky Cursor of Death - In step-wise fasion
• Run any onboard diagnostics programs to determine if your hard drive, processor, motherboard are invariably shot so you don't waste any time
• If everything looks "okay", then ->
• Find your Windows cd. Boot up recovery console. Log onto your OS. Run chkdsk and repair any errors. May have to do this several times until it no longer comes back with any errors.
• Attempt to boot OS
• If unsuccessful, enter recovery console again and in command prompt try the following commands...
• First try: fixboot. You will be asked if you would like to try and repair the boot sector of the HD. Type "Y" and hit enter. Attempt to boot OS.
• If unsuccessful try the next command, fixmbr. Realize that this command is going to be "repairing" probably the most important file on your computer, the Master Boot Record. Think of all yours files as leaves, folders are branches, and this file as the stump of the tree. Without the stump you just have a bunch of leaves and branches floating in space with no way to really correlate anything. But also understand that if you are at this step, this is pretty much your last ditch attempt to keep your "tree." Of course it will ask if you are sure you want to do this and type "y" and hit enter. Attempt to boot OS.
• If still unsuccessful, it is time to ask yourself a question. Do I want to fix this or do I want a new computer?
• I chose to fix my computer.
• If your hard drive is still relatively intact you need to retrieve your data. If you hard drive is not intact you need to get a new one and hope that that is the issue.
• To retrieve your data, I highly recommend Ubuntu - A Linux OS. There is a free download out there and you just have to create a boot disk with the image file. After booting from this Linux boot disk you can drag and drop files from your current hard drive to a external hard drive.
• Now is time to format your drive w/ recovery console. I did not do this, but my good friend Justin made this suggestion: "If you ever reformat your hard drive create 2 partitions. One for Windows, the other for everything else. In the event Windows fails, all you need to do then is reformat one partition hopefully to fix your issue and save all your data. :)
• After reinstalling Windows download all your data off the external hard drive and start the long painful process of re-installing all your programs. I hope you saved all those install CDS!

There you have it, your complete guide to the Blinky Cursor of Death and a potential guide in the event your Windows OS gets stuck elsewhere.

I think that is enough for today, I only think a few people will make it this far but at least I have a guide in the future considering my track record :) Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!

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