Hanging Black Screen Pre Boot with Static Underscore or cursor

[mastermind2]

I've searched everywhere for trying to resolve this.

I have a Fusion image with Windows 8 guest image that was saved in suspended state. My hard drive start to show signs of going bad (slow read access), so I copied files onto a new external hard drive, including the Virtual Machines Directory. I installed Fusion 7.1.1 fresh on a MBA and connected my external hard drive. I attempted to open up the image and selected copied. But have been having problems ever since.

Basically I get kernel error if I try to just start up and it forces a restart. Then goes into hanging black screen.  The black screen occurs immediately after the VMWare Splash logo upon power on.

So I've recopied the image and went into the image file and removed all the locks and temporary storage files. Tried to start, no kernel error, but still hanging black screen.

So I've tried to create a new VM File using the existing vmdk files but creating new custom configuration and selecting the vmdk files. - No error but still boots to hanging back screen.

I'm tried disabling 3D graphics. No impact

The existing VM image may have been created under a slightly earlier version of Fusion (maybe 7.0 at minimum), however I don't think this would have had an issue.

I'm attached a screen shot of the what is happening. I can't even hit F8 to safe boot.

I don't see any blatant errors in the log file. i'm attaching the log

[continuum]

Cursor in the top left corner of the screen usually means that the vmdk is initialized - but not bootable.

To be bootable a windows vmdk needs an activated primary partition + a valid partition-bootsector.
The partition-bootsector can be NT 5 style 6t6hen it references NTLDR - or NT 6 and later then it references BOOTMGR.

Suggestion: boot the VM into your favorite Windows-bootCD.
Then check if the disk:

- if it is partitoned at all
- if it has valid bootable partition that is activated
- if there exists NTLDR or BOOTMGR or any other bootloader.

It would be good if the NTFS can still be detected at all - if possible then run  a chkdsk /f /x /r C: from the LiveCD.

If you are lucky that can already do the trick

Ulli

[mastermind2]

Thanks. I did try that and there was a lot of errors. Literally almost an hour worth of scanning. Looked like index and record errors. Anyway, I aborted and luckily was able to boot off my failing HD one more time and start the VM and copy my data from it. Now I'll just start clean. I was worried the HD would lock up like it had been or complete crash while I was using it.