Ummountable boot volume and undetected HD

[andrewcc]

So, I have a three year old Dell (I know, it's junk, I'm working up a new build list as we speak) and it's worked just fine for those three years. Today though, I turned it on and it I got a Stop error about an "Unmountable boot volume."

Since Google is my friend, I asked him for help, and was told to run chkdsk from my XP CD. So I did. However, when I hit "r" to bring up the command prompt, I was told that windows could not detect my hard drive.

In an effort to make it detectable I changed the SATA ports it was connected to and the same thing happened. I haven't tried connecting it to the IDE yet (had to go to class), but that's next on the list So, now, I can't run Chkdsk, I can't boot to windows in any sort of mode, I can't do anything besides look at a blue Stop Error Screen. At this point I'm pretty much at a loss if the IDE doesn't work.

Any suggestions? Anyone at all? Please? Thank you?

 

[sturm]

look:
Here, here, and maybe here.
I have had this before and it was a bad drive. Dell has a disk check utility by pressing F11 or F12 at the post screen.

 

[andrewcc]

See, the problem with those links you gave (thanks for digging them up, btw) is that they all assume I can actually RUN the repair console....which....I can't....because it tells me it cannot detect a hard disk. I will, however be trying out the Dell Disk check thing...hopefully it works.

Anyone else?


Edited: Becuz i speel gud.

 

[sturm]

Does the bios see the drive correctly?

Can you put that drive in another computer and see if its detected?

 

[andrewcc]

Zoiks....Sorry I missed the reply Sturm. In answer to the question posed, yeah, the BIOS is detecting the drive, both on my machine and on another.

I found out that I can boot to the Dell installed diagnostic partition, and the tests on it tell me that I have one (1 miserable) bad sector. I'm assuming it's in the boot region based on the fact that I can pull up the diagnostic partition.

I thought maybe I could use the existing OS on the second machine to boot, and then try and get the files I need off the dysfunctional drive, reformat, etc, but when I have both drives plugged in, that rig won't boot either. Not sure if that's an effect of the busted drive or the fact that the busted one is SATA and the other is IDE.

mpilch-Thanks for the reply and the last ditch option, but I'm still trying to figure out if I can save this thing. Since it's gone down I've realized I wasn't as good with the backups as I should have been. :| Nothing major or anything, but it'd be nice to have some of those school papers back.

 

[apocalyp5e]

You could try to repair the bad sector with MHDD or HD Regenerator.
If that fails then it is time to move your data to another drive.
If you need help write back.