Fun. STOP 0xED: UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
edited October 2004 in Hardware
Last week I had to reboot my laptop after a rare 3D app crash* (Dell I8200), and almost instantly Windows XP came up with a BSoD displaying the message 'UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

*(This was a normal shutdown and reboot, windows was still functioning behind the framebuffer... all I had to do was wait and press Alt+E during shutdown to end the 3D program... saw the desktop after that, emptying out as usual, then the blue shutdown screen..)

Tried again, same thing. I went searching around, and many sites, including MS, say to load up the recovery console from the CD and run CHKDSK /R, and if that doesn't work, FIXBOOT. Fine. If I could just get that far :). Tried that and it BSoD'd again, this time in NTFS.SYS. Subsequent attempts at this failed as well, this time hanging up while Windows was inspecting the disk. Repair Reinstall also fails for the same reason. Safe mode also fails.

I ran DFT on the drive (40GB Hitachi Travelstar, 5400RPM/8MB), and it did not find any errors with the unit at all.

I hurriedly ordered an external USB 2.0 2.5" drive case from Newegg, but it won't get here until sometime next week. I was hoping just to plug this into my other XP machine and CHKDSK it, hopefully being able to put the MS hamster back onto the wheel.

Fortunately, the Knoppix 3.3 Bootable Linux CD sees all my NTFS partitions just fine and I was able to copy all my data over the network to the other machine... at 2.2MB/sec. :shakehead

I'm hoping not to have to whip out the old DOS/Win98 boot floppy and trash the thing with FDISK in order to have XP use the disk again. I may end up zero-ing the drive out with DFT instead...

I'd rather not do that though since getting everything reinstalled and set up the way I need it would take days, I'd rather have a five-minute fix. Any suggestions?

...Yeah, it's pretty bad when an OS hoses one little thing enough that it renders the entire disk unusable to itself, but this is Microsoft and they NEVER THINK that ANY of their software will EVER malfunction. Idiots. :rolleyes:

Comments

  • gibbonslgibbonsl Grand Forks AFB
    edited October 2004
    have you tryed reseating the drive in the laptop

    might want to try the memery to

    one of the two might have a loose connection
  • godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
    edited October 2004
    I've cleaned the contacts and reseated the HDD, RAM, optical drives...no change.

    I found a site that has software and instructions on making a Bootable Windows CD (bootable as in desktop, not setup) that might allow me to fix it.

    http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2004
    You nead to clean the filesystem. It was trashed in the crash. boot from the cd, go into the recovery console and run chkdsk. 95 percent of the time your fixed
  • godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
    edited October 2004
    Now if I could only get to the recovery console without crashing... (IF MS ran the space program we would have an astronaut shortage...)

    that bootable windows method (BartPE) also gives an NTFS.SYS BSoD.

    Something with this file system is hosed so bad that it causes Microsoft's NTFS driver to go into the tank.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2004
    If it won't boot its not the filesystem. Check memory like I think someone else posted. The filesystem will not keep you froim booting into the recovery console etc.. Get THAT fixed and then address the filesystem,
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited October 2004
    you run memtest yet?
  • godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
    edited October 2004
    Memtest86+ v1.26, Standard test, 3 passes, no errors..

    Also, BartPE boots and runs fine with HDD pulled.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2004
    Look for the disks that came with your laptop and boot with the diagnostics cd or go to Dell's site and download their diagnostics programs and boot up with that and check the hard drive with their diagnostics program. See what that returns on their hard drive diagnostics.
  • godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
    edited October 2004
    Everything's fine with those diagnostics...

    I'm just going to wipe the disk and reinstall from scratch... :eek3:
  • godzilla525godzilla525 Western Pennsylvania Member
    edited October 2004
    Well I gave up on it and wiped the MBR with DFT. So far it's back up and working again; too much stuff to reinstall yet... one thing I did notice when putting stuff back was that about 90% of my pictures were missing... I had the ones I actually care about (e.g. digital photographs) backed up on two other devices, but I'll have to redownload a ton of funny pics. :)

    The odd part is that Windows and my data are on two different partitions, so my scheme of keeping things on separate partitions to prevent damage didn't exactly work. :aol:

    Oh well...
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