Solved! Desktop Boot Issue

[Caveman.42]

I have a Lenovo Thinkstation S30 running Windows 7, it will only boot to what looks like a command screen, black but lit well and blinking white dash in upper left. No response from keyboard or mouse here, tried a few things to get a response like ctrl+alt+del and ctrl+shift+esc. Pressing enter during startup takes me to the same black screen but I can get into BIOS with F1 at this point. Again no response from keyboard or mouse! I did a little searching on this and my tower does not have the old connector style its usb only and I cant interact with BIOS to turn on the usb keyboard settings. I have tried restarting with the keyboard in several different usb slots, including the #1 slot which has a little keyboard pictogram beside it.

Can anyone offer advice here? Is there a way to force a safe mode startup I'm not aware of? Or another work around for usb keyboards in BIOS that dosent require keyboard interaction to activate? I'm at a loss

 

[COLGeek]

That indicator (flashing underscore) is usually an indicator that the system's BIOS/UEFI can't detect a bootable device.

Access the BIOS and make sure your storage devices are being detected properly.

I suspect this older system may have developed some problems.

 

[Mateo65]

are u sure at the bios menu the keyboard gives no response because it should since when u press f1 it responds if it does try to get it to boot from a usb bootable drive or windows installation disk if that works then just simply reinstall windows the flashing underscore cld mean there is a problem with your boot cofigurations reinstalling windows will fix this if posiible i recommend you wipe the hard drive because it might be a virus or malware that messed up ur pc

 

[Caveman.42]

i double checked my connections to the hard drive just to make sure nothing was loose, didn't help any so next step is finding my old boot disk i guess? It's strange to me yeah I can F1 into the bios at startup but after that I have no response or interaction from the keyboard at all.

 

[Caveman.42]

I got a recovery disk but the PC wont boot to it, I've discovered that a few random keys do work in the BIOS like esc and enter, but I cant navigate or anything. This is a cheapo USB wired keyboard from walmart, is there another kind of keyboard that may work?

 

[COLGeek]

I got a recovery disk but the PC wont boot to it, I've discovered that a few random keys do work in the BIOS like esc and enter, but I cant navigate or anything. This is a cheapo USB wired keyboard from walmart, is there another kind of keyboard that may work?

Even a cheap keyboard should allow you to navigate your BIOS.

This sounds like more than a (potentially) corrupted/damaged/defective boot device.