Unmountable boot volume-blue screen of death

[pcu]

I've got a dell e1505 laptop running windows xp. About 6 months ago I upgrade the 80gb HD to a hitachi travelstar 160gb HD. I used acronis true image to make the upgrade.

All was fine till about a month ago. Out of the blue the pc would freeze and then would revert to blue screen of death. Like the nimrod I am I chose to restart and just ignore. After a month of the periodically happening it now just goes straight to the blue screen of death once restarted and I get the message about the blue screen of death.

At the moment I am attempting to image the corrupted HD to an external with Acronis in hopes that I may be abel to use it to recover files if all else fails, not even sure if that is possible.

Anyway when I googled unmountable boot volume I came across this

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

Great, sounds like a solution to my problem! Of course I ran into a roadblock that I can't seem to figure out. I don't have the windows CD and so I went to the link provided to try and create the boot disk. I am currently using my old desktop which has a floppy drive, so I should be able to make the 6 floppy's.

BUT

How am I then supposed to utilize them on the dell laptop which has no floppy drive? I am totally confused at that point. Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

 

[valis]

most likely your hard drive is dying. the signs were there, you ignored them unfortunately.

your best bet may be to go for a warranty replacement. SOMETIMES you can fix this, but if the drive is developing bad sectors or the pcb is bad then you're pretty much hosed.

 

[pcu]

Well that would friggin blow. Drive lasted approximately 6 months.

 

[pcu]

Warranty replacement is not gonna work either. I installed the HDD myself so its not under Dell warranty.

My biggest concern is recovering my music.

Once I create the image of the corrupt drive to the external HDD, will I be able to hook that external up to my desktop and copy and save files from it? If so I could retrieve the files that way and then wipe the corrupted HDD and start from scratch or get a new HDD.

Any thoughts?

 

[grieve]

Don’t worry about the music, it is still all on the net to steal...ERR borrow I mean… ERR use as backup to the CD’s you already I bought I meant.

 

[ethel]

The trouble is that hard drives are mechanical devices and do fail sometimes. Make sure you have a backup solution next time.

A very drastic option is to put your drive in the freezer for a while and then connect it to your PC - in some circumstances this can make it work for a short while - enough time to recover your stuff off of it. It's a desparate option but it might just work. Try it at your risk though ...

 

[justin39640]

this error is a problem with the boot.ini file if you get another hd u can put this 1 in an external usb enclosure and read it like another partition since its not booting the pc the boot.ini file thats corrupt doesnt come into play

i think if you can borrow a friends copy of xp since youre only repairing it i think the recovery console will still work even if its a diff version but id try to get the same (i wouldnt try with a windows xp 64bit disk though)

i had this problem on a friends computer (pc with floppy drive) that i fixed (and it worked)
i will post my findings here since this thread comes up high on google searches

1 - i fried my mobo in my gaming pc so i had only 2 laptops avail to me (a newer compaq and a circa 1997 ibm thinkpad lol) but luckily the ibm came with an external floppy drive (LOL) and no cd drive
2 - i made the 6 floppies and ran them i got to the repair console
3 - ran "chkdsk /r" (r is for repair)
3 - got error message that autochk.exe could not be located please enter complete path
4 - through many google searches ive come to understand that this is because the folder (commonly) c/windows/system32 has its contents hidden and that the repair console could not see its contents (autochk is there) an example of a folder with hidden contents is like the 1st time you opened "program files" and had to select "show folder contents" to see anything
5 - the version i was repairing was xp home my laptop (compaq) runs on xp pro i took a shot and copied my autochk.exe (from the compaq) to a cd
6 - when chkdsk asked for the autochk location i directed it to the proper lettered cd drive (if you have the install disk just direct it to look at the cd drive it is in typically D) this 1 was E since it has 2 cd drives
7 - chkdsk ran (thank god) and when it stopped i typed exit and the pc booted to the black screen (start in safe mode etc) i selected start windows normally and it did so far so good rebooted several times and in the middle of updates

other tips for the novice
compaq dell etc use diff keys to enter the bios compaq is "f10" most are "delete" if youre reading this search out your machine to figure it out
if you cant boot from the windows cd
you have to enter the bios and look for the "boot order" makes sure the hardrive is last to boot
some companies turn the ability to boot from removable media off (ie cd and floppy)
there will be a section to turn this feature on in the bios just look for it (enable) try device settings or something like that (alot of bios's are diff and use diff terms)

as for the autochk error if you update your xp there is a fix for it incase of a future blue screen of death

thank you for all those out there who helped me fix my friend's pc

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey