Unmountable Boot Volume - At Wits End

franticfrantic
edited June 2004 in Hardware
:ukflag: hi all newby here ,,,,,,im having a problem kind of the same, im trying to install win xp from the cd, fresh ...after all the files are copied to memory from the cd and its about to give the welcome to windows set-up I get the blue screeen stating "Unmountable boot volume" the strange thing there isn't an operating system on the hard drive. I've been to seagate the manufactors and downloaded the hard drive testing software and it indicates the drive is working correctly. I have installed winxp using another machine on the same hard drive transfered it back to the P4 machine and get another blue screen :mean: ....i have tried all suggested in the forum....But still no joy.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP! :banghead:

Comments

  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited June 2004
    Is this a new computer? New or differant cables on the hardisk?

    Its corrupting the filesystem. Could be probs with devices interfering the disk controller. probs using the current udma setting, memory etc... But it's just as often a bad cable or a cable unable to run at the proper udma settings. Like a 40pin cable or a crappy round cable etc... Try swapping the cable and lower the UDMA setting on the drive just for the XP install.

    Try setting the bios to "fail safe settings" and leave as many of the devices like usb, LAN, sound, etc... disabled for the initial XP install. The goal is just to get the OS to stick for now and you can juice the bios settings higher and enable the other devices after XP is running.
  • ickster33a16ickster33a16
    edited June 2004
    or his boot sector may be dead?????
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited June 2004
    frantic wrote:
    :ukflag: hi all newby here ,,,,,,im having a problem kind of the same, im trying to install win xp from the cd, fresh ...after all the files are copied to memory from the cd and its about to give the welcome to windows set-up I get the blue screeen stating "Unmountable boot volume" the strange thing there isn't an operating system on the hard drive. I've been to seagate the manufactors and downloaded the hard drive testing software and it indicates the drive is working correctly. I have installed winxp using another machine on the same hard drive transfered it back to the P4 machine and get another blue screen :mean: ....i have tried all suggested in the forum....But still no joy.
    PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP! :banghead:

    AND, given the fact that XP had been installed on another box but then transferred back, the BOOT SECTOR might still be an XP boot sector, even though no XP boot volume or partition is present.

    First do what Tex said, but if in fact you still cannot get the HD to take an XP install, look at your Seagate HD utils that you got. See if they have zero pack option, let it zero pack the drive overnight (will take quite a while, but if it completes you know this is not a JUST HD or cable issue that is keeping the XP install from happening and if it does NOT complete this is a HD or hardware timings or cable issue). THEN install XP while also doing what Tex says (assuming the zero-pack works), if the other things he says do not help (he's right about those also, but XP can do this also if the XP installer is not allowed to wipe everything or if someone managed to wipe the XP boot partition and not the boot sector and the bootloader there also. This CAN be a preboot bootloader error where the partition that XP booted from has been trashed but the boot sector and bootloader pointer info to where the boot partition used to start is on HD still.
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