Have completely low level formatted hard disk on an old pc created a partion run live cd successfully - puppy precise- and use the install wizard to install to the partition...frugal.
changed the bios to boot from hdd on reboot it seems that it is recognising the os but then a black screen with a flashing dash top left. any ideas?

What file system did you format it with, EXT3, EXT4? Low level? Hmmm... should only have needed a high level format surely. What did you use?

Did it load a Grub menu with Puppy as the selection, otherwise what evidence have you that it recognised there was an OS?

It would also help if you could tell us some more about the PC; make, model, spec, etc. If you managed to get the live CD to run properly, an install should also work.

Oh! Welcome to Linux Questions by the way.

Play Bonny!

Like Soadyheid said

http://shino.pos.to/linux/images/rescue_floppy.png

Are you getting one of those if you installed grub4dos bootloader?
Before you go to

How long do you wait before giving up after you get the flashing cursor?

I get exactly the same thing after I select which kernel to boot from Grub. Like you, the cursor sits in the top left hand corner of a black screen flashing, no disk activity, all looks dead, however... Approximately twenty to thirty seconds later after this period of inactivity the disk cranks up and I get the Mint boot screen with the colour scanned dots before everything bursts into life.

This doesn't bother me too much as I come from an environment where IBM RS6000 computers invariably took about 45 minutes to boot, so I've learned to be patient in this "everything-must-happen-immediately|" world.

If it works, you can install an App called Bootchart which generates a .png graphic chart of which services/processes were running since power on. Useful for identifying what's happening during the seemingly dead period. (No, I haven't got round to fixing my system yet though.) Once installed the charts are kept in /var/log/bootchart.

Hope that helps.

Play Bonny!