Unmountable Boot Volume AFTER re-format

edited August 2007 in Hardware
My OS crashed into a boot loop a few days ago. I have a Master ATA (WD 40 gb) for my boot drive and system file and a 160 GB SATA Master for my storage.

The WD I have reformatted and installed XP and I am getting the UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME error after the CD copies the system files and automatically reboots to complete the install.

So Chkdsk is not an option.

I also had 2 Partitions on my SATA 140gb and a 20gb Partition which I created to also use for dual boot purposes for Linux Unbuntu.

I wiped the partition and tried to install the XP on this partition and I am getting the same blue screen of death error.

As you can see chkdsk/r or any recovery console is not an option as this is a fresh install.

I was thinking maybe to zero-pack the 40gb WD to determine if this is an absolute hardware issue. However, the only way I know how to zero pack my WD is to go to their website and download the uitlity. Does anybody know of any other way to write all zeros to the HD.

I dont think this is a BIOS issue or the UDMA settings. I reset all the defaults on my BIOS.


Any suggestions??

Any is appreciated.

Comments

  • edited August 2007
    wow , I guess I'm screwed lol
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited August 2007
    I'm not sure exactly when your BSOD occurs- is it right after your system files are installed or is it when Windows install says it is done and is going to reboot?

    I had something similar happen and my thought is that you might have a bad installation optical drive/cable. Try to replace it with a spare or a friends and try it out. Also check its cable.
  • edited August 2007
    Qeldroma wrote:
    I'm not sure exactly when your BSOD occurs- is it right after your system files are installed or is it when Windows install says it is done and is going to reboot?

    I had something similar happen and my thought is that you might have a bad installation optical drive/cable. Try to replace it with a spare or a friends and try it out. Also check its cable.

    Yea, this is my problem alot I overlook the trivial things... Could be the cable or the IDE cable.... But on both drives?

    The BSOD appears right after the setup files are copied and the setup reboots the PC.. I tried to do the fixboot and chkdsk options from the recovery console to no avail. The chkdsk /p came back with errors. The boot sector was repairable as I didn't get a "cannot fix" error. I dunno

    Could be (Hopefully not) the HD's are FUBAR
  • QeldromaQeldroma Arid ZoneAh Member
    edited August 2007
    I would recommend running WD Data Lifegaurd Diagnostic and see if your drives are OK. Use the DOS version on a bootable FLOPPY disk. Post back the results.

    As cheap as drives are today, there's not a lot of sense in pushing a suspect old one.

    Usually this error is a result of a problem that is either with the drive that is being written to (mostly) or the one that is being read from. That is why I also suggested looking at the optical drive.
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