Unmountable boot volume blue screen

[Amberlives]

Hi, I read other peoples thread where they had the same plight with the computer freezing out of nowhere, then on restart the blue screen came up with the Unmountable boot volume message with the inability to get going in safemode. I also read about reinstalling the windows CD. I believe the computer came set up and did not include the windows cd and if it did, I don't have it now. It's been 4 years.
The only screen I can get into is the grey one that comes up when I press F2 on restart. I'll include the info that it gives.

Intel Pentium 4 processor 2.66 ghz
Level 2 Cache: 512 kb integrated
Bios Version A06
Boot sequence is 1. diskeette drive 2. hard disk drive c 3 ide cd rom device.
This is a Dell.
I'm wondering if anyone else has gotten into safe mode without having the cd? Or if there is anything that I can do on this grey screen.
It seems to be some sort of system operations screen. Any advice is appreciated! Thank you. :cool:

[Tex]

You can get into safe mode without a key. But you need a cd.

Tex

[Amberlives]

You can get into safe mode without a key. But you need a cd.

Thanks, how do I get a cd?

Tex

[Amberlives]

How does one get a cd?

[jokke]

If you don't have one, buy one?

[Kentigern]

Contact Dell Support for cd (small fee to pay), also sometimes they put the win recovery on a hidden partition

[stoopid]

Ask around to see if someone you know might have a XP CD included with their computer. As long as it's an OEM version (included with a prebuilt machine) then it should work okay with the code from the product key sticker on yours.

BTW, I was working on a computer today with the exact same problem and it turned out to be a dying hard drive (even though the drive passed some basic tests it failed the more extensive one).

Try running a full (advanced) DFT.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT