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HELP unmountable boot volume?


dorisno1

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Hey, This could be a long post so I apologise now. Yesterday I turned on my laptop,the windows screen started up with the blue bar under the word windows, loading. Then the **** thing just went off and re started..... I have pressed f8 and restarted in every which way suggested,but to no avail. In desperation I tried the recovery. This just took me to a blue screen with "unmountable_boot_volume" at top and several things below such as if this is the first time you have seen this screen then please re start computer etc. It suggests to remove bios and such but the thing is I cant get anything else,apart from what I have described, to happen...Please any suggestions as to what I can do.I am on my works computer now and am not capable enough to begin removing hard drives and do not want to have to use this one for anything other than maybe a downloadable "fix it" programme lol on blushing.gif I am using a hp 510 notebook with windows xp 2000 service pack two,by the way

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then i'm afraid your stuffed, the only legal way of aquiring a winxp dics is by buying one, or you can use another xp disc, it doenst mattyer if it is for or not for your computer, and you casn also use family to boot pro and pro to boot family, i did it with my pc, (winxp pro) and used a windows xp home edition disc and it all works fine.

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I'm afraid your HDD is busted. Unmountable Boot Volume BSOD indicates that a file critical to booting the system could not be read. You can try reinstalling, but if the error comes back after a few months you'll have to replace your hard drive.

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I'm afraid your HDD is busted. Unmountable Boot Volume BSOD indicates that a file critical to booting the system could not be read. You can try reinstalling, but if the error comes back after a few months you'll have to replace your hard drive.

Well, unless you have a working crystal ball or some ESP powers, there is no way to conclude that a HD is "busted" because of an "unmountable boot volume" error.

Cause can be ANYTHING among:

bad cable/connection

corrupted filesystem

bad BIOS settings

Reference:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555302/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185/en-us

Usually a CHKDSK /R, re-seating the cable (or changing it) and checking the BIOS settings resolves the problem.

Particularly:

Unmountable Boot Volume BSOD indicates that a file critical to booting the system could not be read.

is not accurate, it is the filesystem (not a single file) that cannot be properly mounted.

jaclaz

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I agree my hdd isnt bust!!! as I am currently re installing to default factory settings .....extreme i know but i had already made back ups of anything important on there that i had!!!! however i do seem to have come to a stand still on recovery disc 8 for some reason???

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I agree my hdd isnt bust!

But you cannot as well say that.

It may well be an intermittent problem.

You will need anyway to check the hard disk.

jaclaz

P.S.: You should also check your keyboard, your "!" and "?" keys appear to get stuck... ;)

Edited by jaclaz
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Well since your are already running a system restore it is a mute point, but you could also have downloaded the WAIK from microsoft and created a Windows PE cd and run chkdsk from there to check/fix your problem.

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===== Post Nº 1 =====

I have got as far as recovery disc 9 and I havent got that one....grrrrrrr So now Im stuck!!!!!

===== Post Nº 2 =====

Re unmountable blue screen etc,I have resolved this issue with help from a different sight thanks to those who bothered and to those who didnt!!1

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  • 4 weeks later...
I agree my hdd isnt bust!

But you cannot as well say that.

It may well be an intermittent problem.

You will need anyway to check the hard disk.

jaclaz

P.S.: You should also check your keyboard, your "!" and "?" keys appear to get stuck... ;)

it definitely is an intermittent problem with the hard drive, jaclaz. Here's the specific "unmountable boot volume message" I got on my brother's XP laptop:

Stop 0x000000ED (0x85B3BB20 0xC000009C 0x00000000 0x00000000)

Notice the second "parameter" of the stop error is "0xC000009C" which seem to indicate a "bad block" or bad cluster/bad sector [do a Google search on 0xC000009C and you can find more info about that]

I couldn't reach the XP Recovery Console, even if I booted from either the XP Setup Boot Floppies or the XP CD as I would get a different blue screen error message telling me to run CHKDSK /F or CHKDSK /R to fix the problems, but I couldn't access CHKDSK because the blue screen message appears before I get the chance.

But now I got it resolved by loading the Spinrite 6.0 boot disk on the laptop with the faulty hard drive and Spinrite found a bunch of bad clusters and recovered crucial data, even though it took many hours to fix. The "unmountable boot volume" message never appeared again after the XP OS was reloaded.

In short, Spinrite saved our butts this time. I suggest buying a copy though it might be a little expensive. Use it on a different machine with a working HD to create a Spinrite boot floppy disk or Spinrite boot CD and load either one into your computer with the faulty hard drive. Spinrite is far better than using CHKDSK or SCANDISK and not only detects bad clusters better than CHKDSK/SCANDISK but also can recover data from those flawed sectors.

Edited by erpdude8
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Well, usually running a CHKDSK /R solves this kind of problems for free.

Of course you need to run it from a PE of some kind or from Recovery Console booted from external media, CD-ROM or USB stick/hd, even the XP install CD-ROM allows to boot to Recovery Console.

Of course, you should have a backup of the data....

...I find Spinrite a very good app, as you say it's a bit expensive, and there are other solutions to recover data from supposedly bad sectors/clusters....and to re-format properly.

I find that the real problems in these cases are DYI jobs made by not enough expert users or by the "neighboor's son which is a computer wiz" ;).

If you care about data on your hard disks, backup.

Even if you don't, backup as well.

In case of doubt, backup.

Once you have NOT backed up your data, the price of ANY recovery software is nothing when compared to the loss of (say) the documents it took weeks to write, the photos from your family's last three years holidays, etc.

In these cases, if you feel not confident enough to attempt a recovery by yourself, ask for help BEFORE attempting it.

Even if you feel confident enough, ask for help about ANY doubt you may have, even little or apparently marginal ones, BEFORE attempting the recovery.

And consider the idea, depending on the value you attribute to data on the drive, to ask a professional consultant and/or data recovery company for a price, BEFORE attempting the recovery.

jaclaz

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