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

[hedders]

Personally , I would get a fresh hard drive in there, install a fresh copy of XP, and then throw the old hard drive back in as a secondary drive and move all the files she wants to keep from the old drive onto the new one. Then format the old drive and keep it as extra storage.

I am sure there is an easier way, but that is what i do, when i get serious problems and can not even boot the machine up...

[lemmonie]

This should be in the Computer forum

[meeja]

I would suggest this thread be moved to the "Computers and Stuff" forum..... may get a quicker answer there.

Sounds pretty heavy duty to me..... boot sector of drive overwritten?

Not certain, but if that is the case, it may be possible to put another hard drive in as a master, install XP on it, then add the faulty drive as a slave (ie no need to boot from faulty drive) and retrieve data before re-formatting it?

Having said that, I'm not an IT expert compared to some people on this forum, so i could be talking out of my ae

[hedders]

meeja said:

Not certain, but if that is the case, it may be possible to put another hard drive in as a master, install XP on it, then add the faulty drive as a slave (ie no need to boot from faulty drive) and retrieve data before re-formatting it?

Now, why didn't i say that?..oh wait, I did

[Maycott]

My Laptop runs XP and did exactly the same thing on Sunday night

If anyone does have a solution, I'd really like to hear it

[rjo]

Can you boot into safe mode?
Can you boot to last good whatever it is?
Can you boot from your XP disc?
Is the computer a HP or NEC or similar that has built in system recovery?
Remember, if all else fails; RTFM
If you have one

[Maycott]

Can't get into safe mode, can't boot to laast good setting that worked. In fact, can't get past the 'blue screen of death'

Read the manual, swore, threw it around for while (also didn't help) and reluctantly conceded defeat.

I've booked it in with the office IT Guru, but he is busy until Friday, and I'd quite like to use it before then

Also, has photo's of my Daughter on it (steady!) and I haven't saved the last few month's worth to disk

[size13]

You used to be able to repair the boot sector with fdisk didn't you? Can you still do this with XP?

I think it was something like fdisk /mbr

[loaf]

size13 said:

You used to be able to repair the boot sector with fdisk didn't you? Can you still do this with XP? I think it was something like fdisk /mbr

fdisk isn't compatible with XP - it only works with Windows 9x and Windows ME

[loaf]

What's the STOP code on the BSOD? I'm interested in the second parameter - the code should read something like:

STOP 0x000000ED (0xaaaaaaaa,0xbbbbbbbb....)UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

What's the 0xbbbbbbbb number? If it's 0xC0000032 then the filesystem is shagged and she'll need to have installed the Recovery Console to sort it, using chkdsk /f. If she hasn't installed the console then the only way is the previously mentioned using another HDD as the primary with a fresh install of XP and the ed HDD as a slave, and using chkdsk /f from the fresh copy of XP on the duff volume.

If it isn't that, has your mate installed any hardware recently? Specifically any hard disk/RAID controllers?

>> Edited by loaf on Tuesday 28th October 11:24

[ErnestM]

Try running The XP install again over the top of the existing installation. When it gets to a certain point it will ask you if you wish to attempt a repair. Select that option. All your data should be fine, but you may have to reistall some programs.

ErnestM

Edited to add: I am assuming that she has not done anything strange in the BIOS like changing IDE assignments or drive identifiers (certain intel 850e chipsetted board cause funky behaviour if you do this)...

>> Edited by ErnestM on Tuesday 28th October 12:28

[meeja]

hedders said:

meeja said: Not certain, but if that is the case, it may be possible to put another hard drive in as a master, install XP on it, then add the faulty drive as a slave (ie no need to boot from faulty drive) and retrieve data before re-formatting it? Now, why didn't i say that?..oh wait, I did

Yes I know! but your answer wasn't there when I started typing my reply!!! Honest!!!

[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?

[hedders]

meeja said:

hedders said: meeja said: Not certain, but if that is the case, it may be possible to put another hard drive in as a master, install XP on it, then add the faulty drive as a slave (ie no need to boot from faulty drive) and retrieve data before re-formatting it? Now, why didn't i say that?..oh wait, I did Yes I know! but your answer wasn't there when I started typing my reply!!! Honest!!!

Need to work on your speed

[meeja]

hedders said:

meeja said: hedders said: meeja said: Not certain, but if that is the case, it may be possible to put another hard drive in as a master, install XP on it, then add the faulty drive as a slave (ie no need to boot from faulty drive) and retrieve data before re-formatting it? Now, why didn't i say that?..oh wait, I did Yes I know! but your answer wasn't there when I started typing my reply!!! Honest!!! Need to work on your speed

Nope, I need to stop Mrs Meeja from asking me to do stuff when I am obviously busy doing very important things (Like PH'ing!)

[loaf]

Mad Dave said:

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?

DO NOT run the recovery CD - it will almost certainly reformat your HDD without repair.

See my previous post - if it is the same error then the same answer applies. If not let me have the full STOP error code and I'll see what I can find...

[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

[loaf]

Mad Dave said:

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

I'm assuming the HDDs are IDE rather than SCSI...in which case your mate has probably got disk write-caching turned on. This=BAD with NTFS as the way that IDE drives optimises disk writes can sometimes leave a time window in which critical NTFS file tables get ed if a write operation isn't finished when NTFS thinks it is.

If she's got Recovery Console then boot into that and run chkdsk /r (not chkdsk /f as I originally posted, dyslexic fingers I'm afraid). If she hasn't got the Recovery Console installed (some OEMs don't include it, christ only knows why) then she/you can download the XP Setup disks from www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=55820EDB-5039-4955-BCB7-4FED408EA73F (the XP Pro version) or here www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=E8FE6868-6E4F-471C-B455-BD5AFEE126D8 (the XP Home version).

Boot into Setup, get to the Recovery Console, and run chkdsk /r form a cmd prompt. If that don't fix it, I dunno what we're gonna do...

Edited to add: She also needs to turn write-caching off a bit sharpish an'all

>> Edited by loaf on Wednesday 29th October 12:54

[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