Unmountable Boot Volume Error

Viscus

I run a 3-4 year old HP Pavilion PC, over the years i've swapped in:

ATI Raedon 7200 64 MB
512 MB RAM (not DDR)

I'm running Windows Pro XP, I was sitting there one day updating ZoneAlarm and waiting for some downloads to finish when my screen goes blue and it says Windows will shut down my computer to prevent security risks. When I start up my computer it goes into the XP Loading screen then gives me a huge blue screen that says UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME then a bunch of suggestions and a line of numbers.

I've tried going in under Recent Config that Worked but that won't work, Safe mode won't even let me in. I still get that blue screen.

I tried swapping out the hard drives and putting some crappy 2 gig'rs in to see if I could maybe get a working computer for a while. But when I try to run my old ME install, it says Hard Drive not found, and that I may need to initlize it but when I try to run Fix Disk it doesn't find my hard disks.

So basically i'm screwed until I find out how to get rid of the Blue Screen, I don't think it will even let me into BIOS, i've tried. However I don't want to re-format the two hard drives I was using, I have valuable info on there. =/

Any help?

muddocktor

Have you looked closely at the capacitors on the motherboard to see if they have some that have swollen or burst and leaking yet? A lot of motherboards of that era were built using faulty capacitors and they will sell or leak and cause malfunctions.

You didn't give many specifics on the system. Is it using AMD or Intel and if it's Intel, is it Celeron, Pentium 3 or Pentium 4?

topherice

Maybe a problem with your Master Boot Record.

Here's an overview and link:

FixmbrRepairs the master boot record of the boot disk. The fixmbr command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console

fixmbr [device_name]

Parameter

device_name

The device (drive) on which you want to write a new master boot record. The name can be obtained from the output of the map command. An example of a device name is:

\Device\HardDisk0.

Example

The following example writes a new master boot record to the device specified:

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

Note

If you do not specify a device_name, a new master boot record will be written to the boot device, which is the drive on which your primary system is loaded.
If an invalid or nonstandard partition table signature is detected, you will be prompted whether you want to continue. If you are not having problems accessing your drives, you should not continue. Writing a new master boot record to your system partition could damage your partition tables and cause your partitions to become inaccessible.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/...onsole_cmds.asp

Straight_Man

One thing, use FIXBOOT and fixmbr. Sometimes, it takes a Fixmbr then a fixboot /scan then a fixboot [device letter] in that sequence to fix completely--- if it is just the mbr\boot sector. Usually, CHKDSK can be foirced directly from recovery console also, and it is wise to first do that to see if fatal directory\file corruption has occured FIRST, then recover mbr if needed also, and the boot sector.

topherice

Good catch John D.

Viscus

My processor's an Intel Pentium 4 processor, and I don't know how to use FDISK, or FIXBOOT or FIXMBR. when I swapped in a couple of new hard drives it said to run fdisk to wipe them but I don't know the command to run it, or if I need a disk or something.

Also i'm not sure what kind of Motherboard I use, I was able to get into BIOS, is there anyway I can find out so I can present more info?

Also, if at all possible i'd like to save the information. I might pick up a new couple of hard drives, is there anyway I can get my data off the corrupt hard drives without losing it?

muddocktor

If you want to upgrade to a new hard drive, then it shouldn't be too hard to get the information off your old drives if they're still workable. Just install the new hard drive and install your OS, then after you have it updated and all you should be able to plug in the old hard drive into the secondary ide port and transfer the files and folders you want to save. If the old hard drive can't run like that to get your files transferred because of problems with it, then you are talking about sending it to some place for data recovery, which is mucho expensive.

You don't want to run fdisk on those drives if you want to save the info on them; it will wipe out the partitions on the drives. To run the fixmbr or fixboot commands, you will need to stick your copy of XP Pro in the cd drive and boot from it, then choose repair (if I remember right) and boot to the recovery console, which will be a dos type prompt. Then you should be able to follow the instructions given by topherice and John_D.

Viscus

Ok, i'll dig up my copy of XP Pro today, and see if I can run the processes you told me too. I'll update later with how it went. THanks for your help thus far.

Straight_Man

muddocktor wrote:

If you want to upgrade to a new hard drive, then it shouldn't be too hard to get the information off your old drives if they're still workable. Just install the new hard drive and install your OS, then after you have it updated and all you should be able to plug in the old hard drive into the secondary ide port and transfer the files and folders you want to save. If the old hard drive can't run like that to get your files transferred because of problems with it, then you are talking about sending it to some place for data recovery, which is mucho expensive.

You don't want to run fdisk on those drives if you want to save the info on them; it will wipe out the partitions on the drives. To run the fixmbr or fixboot commands, you will need to stick your copy of XP Pro in the cd drive and boot from it, then choose repair (if I remember right) and boot to the recovery console, which will be a dos type prompt. Then you should be able to follow the instructions given by topherice and John_D.

TECHNICALLY, once the old HD is hooked up as slave with a new install on master, you could CHKDSK the slave drive from the new XP install.... IF we can use the multiple HD procedure strategies for data recovery, things get much simpler....

See, with that error, it is complaining about boot stuff, if you let a new install boot and access the drive, the recovery console can chkdsk the old install, now slave, as a data drive. Thus, you get around the boot issue in part. CHKDSK will hang massively if it finds it cannot acess the HD fro hardware reasons, but if run from an XP run with all options checked on the partitions of the old HD that is now mounted as slave, it will ignore the boot things and let you get to folders and files like pure data.

Good idea, Muddocktor. VERY good, even EXCELLENT.

trulyfayrecom

I was upgrading a friend's PC to Win XP and encountered this problem.

I noted that the H/D and CD-Rom were connected on the same IDE cable.

I changed this to a separate cable each and the problem disappeared.

tintino

Straight_Man wrote:

One thing, use FIXBOOT and fixmbr. Sometimes, it takes a Fixmbr then a fixboot /scan then a fixboot [device letter] in that sequence to fix completely--- if it is just the mbr\boot sector. Usually, CHKDSK can be foirced directly from recovery console also, and it is wise to first do that to see if fatal directory\file corruption has occured FIRST, then recover mbr if needed also, and the boot sector.

how u supposed to run chkdsk on a DEVICE? Chkdsk runs on a partition - dont it?
If the mbr is gone - the partition table is too... so u have no volume drive letters to pass to Chkdsk...