My brother tried to login to a box, which had Windows XP along with LinuxMint7.0 (its old). My brother uses windows XP and for myself, I use LinuxMint.
The PROBLEM was “There was no display in monitor”, Green light was blinking with some seconds delayed. I tried power off/on many times, when it didn’t help me, I removed the RAM and re-plugged it back into its position with dust removed. And also removed dust from other computer parts. It was full of dusts, And I hadn’t had any blower so I did it manually with smooth cloths and some blow with mouth.
Then after assembling all parts back together, I tried with power on. This time computer at least showed some response, The monitor was showing the boot startup like that of POST operation. I said to myself wow ! seems working. Then suddenly got an error stating that the system file was missing from windows something like Windows cannot start, missing ntsokrnl.exe. Remember I had two Hard-disk (40 GB +80 GB) with dual boot Linux and Windows. Since I had replaced the Jumper settings, All my BIOS setups were reset. And my linux was in harddisk 2 (40GB), And by default it was my 80 GB that was loading windows.
I then changed my first boot to 40 GB Harddisk (Linux), and tried with GRUB (it’s a bootloader of Linux). Grub gave me Read Error Problem. Then I just stood still, I thought I would have to re-install everything. I was really having tough times. Then again, I tried with another power OFF/ON. This time I got GRUB menu.
From here I selected the “Recovery Mode“. It asked me to fix my hard-disk. I accepted the suggestions. When I finally got recovery screen, I selected to repair my broken packages, check for hard-disk for data corruption, reset the display. I accepted everything that was suggested to me in recovery mode. I also cleared some space. After repeating these steps for 2-3 times. I tried with another attempt, and voila It was finally up and running without having to re-install systems back.
Hope this helps someone.