Unmountable Boot Volume error

carrioncarrion
edited March 2005 in Hardware
Moderator's Note: The member has a problem where the computer won't boot and gives an "Unmountable Boot Volume error".

I'm having this same problem with a family members computer. She's had the computer for just over 3 years now (literally just surpassing the duration of her 3 year warranty on her Dell). She asked what I can do to try to help her out. Could this error possibly be from damaged hardware? Is it possible that I could just reformat and reinstall windows or will I need to get a new HDD as well? Or better yet, does anyone think it's possible to save the HDD as is so no reinstall or no new HDD is needed?

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2005
    Welcome to Short-Media, carrion. :)

    I split your post off from the other thread - you'll get more attention for your problem here than you would in a thread that's nearly a year old.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2005
    Check in the BIOS to see if the hard drive is properly identified there. If not, try setting your IDE channels to "Auto" and see if a drive is found.

    You might want to take a peek in the case and see what brand hard drive Dell put in there for your friend, then go to the HD manufacturers website and download the appropriate diagnostic tool. Once you've eliminated hardware as the problem we can move on to software troubleshooting.

    Assuming the drive is physically OK, you might want to try running TestDisk and see if it can find any recoverable partitions. If you need help with the program just yell.

    Good Luck! :wave:
  • carrioncarrion
    edited March 2005
    Oops...I forgot I asked for help here lol. Thanks for splitting up my topic. I hadn't even paid attention to the date lol. Anyway, thanks for the tips, I'm gonna get started now.
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