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Unmountable Boot Volume

Discussion in 'Techno-Magic' started by Harbourboy, Apr 21, 2008.

  1. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    [​IMG] My laptop has a blue screen of death that says "Unmountable Boot Volume" and I can't do anything. A Google search has revealed some supposed solutions that make it sound like the easiest thing in the world to resolve but I can't make them work.

    Can someone give me the idiot's guide to resolving this problem?

    Thanks!
     
    Harbourboy, Apr 21, 2008
    #1
  2. Tarrasque

    Tarrasque Whoever said Paladins had to be charismatic? ★ SPS Account Holder Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I'm no great computer expert but if you say which of the many responses you're trying to follow, I'll see if I can help you.
     
    Tarrasque, Apr 21, 2008
    #2
  3. Kitrax

    Kitrax Pantaloons are supposed to go where!?!?

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    A little background would be nice.

    What has happened in the week or so leading up the BSoD? Did you do anything physically to the hard drive? :hmm: :rolling:
     
    Kitrax, Apr 21, 2008
    #3
  4. Loreseeker

    Loreseeker A believer in knowledge Veteran

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    Harbourboy: At what step exactly are you having problems with the google solutions?

    Maybe you should write exactly what you are doing, and where do things go bad... That way someone more skilled than me could help you out. :)

    Also, in one of the google answers I saw that if the whole "fixing the corrupt boot.ini file procedure" isn't working, then your hard disc drive could be seriously damaged (failing). In this case, all you can do is replace it.

    I got the following from HP site:

    "HP notebooks that use Microsoft Windows XP without XP Service Pack 2 installed may start with the following error:
    STOP 0x000000ED (0xaaaaaaaa,0xbbbbbbbb,0xcccccccc,0xdddddddd) UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
    This error is related to the way Windows XP interacts with the hard drive during an unexpected shutdown. Sometimes the contents of the cache are not written to the drive properly causing the error to appear when the notebook restarts."

    The fixing procedure is similar to the other solutions.

    I'm no expert, and this thing probably doesn't help you at all. Still I'm sure someone more skilled will do better. Good luck. :)
     
    Loreseeker, Apr 21, 2008
    #4
  5. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    OK, firstly, I did nothing to the computer recently that I can think of.

    To fix it, I supposedly have to get a boot disk, then push R, then do chkdsk, then do fixboot and it will all be solved.

    So, where do I get a bootdisk? My laptop is 5 years old, so I don't think I have the original XP disks anywhere.
     
    Harbourboy, Apr 21, 2008
    #5
  6. Montresor

    Montresor Mostly Harmless Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder

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    Harbs, I think you need to create a boot diskette to start the computer in MS-DOS - provided you have a floppy drive attached to the machine. You should be able to do that on another computer. See here, or search for "Create MS-DOS Boot Diskette" in Help.
     
    Montresor, Apr 21, 2008
    #6

  7. Erod Gems: 14/31
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    Indeed, that is what you should do. The boot disk here is a copy of the XP disc, borrow one if you do not have it. Once it has loaded up from the disc, press R to go to the recovery console and then run chkdsk on all drives. Reboot. If it does not work, then do the same but run fixboot. If even that fails you could try fixmbr.
     
    Erod, Apr 21, 2008
    #7
  8. Loreseeker

    Loreseeker A believer in knowledge Veteran

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    If you don't have anyone to borrow the disc from and can't find your own, you might be able to download it from the net.

    I saw this option yesterday on one of the google solution sites:

    http://www.techtips4u.com/kb/sw/SW00014.htm

    I know nothing of this site (security etc.) so I can't tell you if it's safe for you to download it. Be careful if you do.

    Apparently, you will need six floppy's for it.
     
    Loreseeker, Apr 22, 2008
    #8
  9. Montresor

    Montresor Mostly Harmless Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder

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    McAfee SiteAdvisor says the site is safe. :)
     
    Montresor, Apr 22, 2008
    #9
  10. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Can I use a CD instead of a floppy disk?
     
    Harbourboy, Apr 22, 2008
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  11. Disciple of The Watch

    Disciple of The Watch Preparing The Coming of The New Order Veteran

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    I think Nero has the option for a bootable data CD... I'm not 100% sure, but if Nero does offer the option you could burn a bootable data CD containing the data of the six floppies.
     
    Disciple of The Watch, Apr 22, 2008
    #11
  12. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Can this be done without ever going near a floppy disk? I don't have any, and it seems silly in this day and age to need floppy disks to save my computer.
     
    Harbourboy, Apr 24, 2008
    #12

  13. Erod Gems: 14/31
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    Yes, if you have/make a bootable CD, like the XP disc.
     
    Erod, Apr 24, 2008
    #13
  14. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    Guys, I'm still stuck on this. Remember that I am really thick. Can someone show me the thicko's guide to creating this elusive Windows XP Boot CD that is so crucial to the resolution of this problem. Everything I can find is either steps to create 6 bootable floppy disks (who has floppy disks these days?) or they say to use the original Windows XP CD (which, if I ever had one, is long since lost).

    Help!
     
    Harbourboy, Apr 28, 2008
    #14
  15. Loreseeker

    Loreseeker A believer in knowledge Veteran

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    Nero 6 does have the option of making a bootable cd.
    Perhaps you could download the stuff you need (6 floppys worth) and if you burn it on a cd through this Nero option you could get it to work.
    Just a theory though. Probably wrong.

    http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/xphome.html
    Here you can download the files (also floppy material it seems), but in the thread below there's this:

    "http://www.winimage.com then install it run it and you can open the files that he created and extract them all and burn them on CD and you have a bootable CD"

    It seems that you can use this winimage thing (or a similar application) to enable you to burn the floppy files on a cd, and use it as such.

    Again, I dug this on google and I don't know much on computers so it would be nice if someone with more skill confirmed it.
    Hope it helps, HB.
     
    Loreseeker, Apr 28, 2008
    #15
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