XP Computer wont boot! Any advice?

[Mad Dave]

Morning all,

A friend of mine has a problem with her computer - shes running Windows XP and the other day got a message saying she had a virus. Now the machine wont boot up - says 'unmountable boot volume'. I've managed to get access to the MS Dos prompt by booting on a Win98 boot disk (all I had to hand) but when i try and access the hard disk, it says 'cannot access - abort/retry/fail'. This could be because XP uses NTFS and 98 uses FAT32, so it might not be able to understand it, booting on an XP boot disk?

Any suggestions? This person has some VERY important (to her) stuff on her hard disk, and its not backed up!

Cheers

Dave

[Mad Dave]

Hi Guys,

Ive got the same syptoms as Maycott. Its a Tiny type computer and as such has a Recovery CD - i havent run this as i was worried that it would format the HDD before repair and i dont want to lose data if i can help it! I might take an XP CD over there and try to run a repair from that.

I understand it wont boot as the boot sector is probably screwed, but shouldnt i have been able to access the C: drive by booting from a floppy? I tried it but couldnt access it, but could that be because i was booting an XP system from a Win98 boot disk? (different FAT table things)

Thanks guys

Dave

PS Are there any Virii out there at the mo that would cause this?

[Mad Dave]

Morning guys,

I have here the error code. If anyone can shed any light, you'll make my colleague a very happy lady

***STOP: 0x000000ED (0x80F1C860,0xC000009C, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Cheers

Dave

[Mad Dave]

Cheers Loaf - much appreciated.

Dunno about write caching, nor do i know how to turn it off

Ill download those files and give it a go - i tried to run setup from my XP install CD, but it wouldnt run from DOS. Presumably i can run one of those utilities you mention from bootup?

Thanks for all the help!

Dave

[Mad Dave]

Cheers Loaf, I appreciate the amount of time you've obviously spent on this!

I ran the disks, got to the Recovery Console and ran chkdsk /r but it looked for some other chk program that we didnt have/couldnt find.

Next plan of attack is to pull the HHD out, stick it in another machine as a slave and then pull all the info off. Then we'll format and start again

Ill let you know how we get on

[Mad Dave]

Cheers mate. I tried adding the HDD to a 2k machine, but its security things kick in and wont let the machine boot as it knows the HDD shouldnt be there!

Next plan of action is to stick the HDD into my girlfriends old Win' 98 machine and move it onto there. Ive got an IDE CDR to put in it, so i can then copy the files off.

[Mad Dave]

Hmmm, hadnt thought of that. I dont think she'd have cause to have a password as its a home machine, but ill ask!

Cheers

Dave

[Mad Dave]

Hey guys,

Over the weekend, i tried to slave the drive to my Win98 machine but the machine wouldnt see it at all

The Recovery Console wont work.

Ive tried everything i can think of. Someone has suggested getting an aftermarket OS Loader - anyone got any ideas?

Cheers

Dave

[Mad Dave]

Cheers guys.

In the end i used an NTFS Booter/Viewer to view and copy some of the contents of the drive. Im now going to format and reinstall everything!

What a pain! And its not even my bloody machine.