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Thread: Unmountable boot Volume - WIN XP Pro

  1. 04-22-2003, 11:54 AM #1
    lucy
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    Unmountable boot Volume - WIN XP Pro

    I am helping a friend with his PC. He has Win XP Pro and suddenly got this 'Unmountable boot Volume' during startup. For some reason, we could not boot from the CD-ROM drive even though we set it to boot in the BIOS. Anyway, we used the diskettes to boot and we tried the repair option, it did not work because it did not even recongize the partition was there. My friend would like to recover some of the files on the drive, are there any way to repair the partition? Because recreating the partition will reformat the drive.

    Lucy
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  2. 04-22-2003, 12:15 PM #2
    BipolarBill
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    Be certain that all cables are healthy - having both HDD and CD drop off reeks of a hardware connection issue. It's possible that the CD drive died and left the HDD misjumpered because there is no slave now. Try unplugging the CD drive and jumpering the HDD as Cable Select.

    If that fails, boot from the diskettes again and choose the Recovery Console. Run FIXMBR. Now run CHKDSK C: /F /R.
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  3. 04-22-2003, 12:38 PM #3
    fishybawb
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    It's possible that the CD-ROM's fine, some pirated versions of XP Pro won't boot from CD... Recovery Console sounds like the way forward
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  4. 04-22-2003, 01:39 PM #4
    lucy
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    Fishybawb, the XP Pro he had is an official copy.
    Bipolar Bill,
    The CD-rom is working when booted from diskette. But I will try your suggestion. But how do I get to a prompt to do chkdsk? Once I typed in 'R' for recovery, it showed the C partition is unknown. The same thing happened if I chose install XP.

    Lucy
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  5. 04-22-2003, 01:49 PM #5
    BipolarBill
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    Well, the drive may have failed. Put the HDD and CD on seperate cables and jumper each as Cable Select to prevent one from affecting the other. If the drive is a Western Digital or IBM, pay close attention to the jumpering - it's different if the drive is alone on a cable.

    Is BIOS detecting a drive? Look in Standard CMOS Setup.
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  6. 04-22-2003, 03:59 PM #6
    lucy
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    The system actually has 2 HDD and 2 CD drives. So they are on separate IDE channel. THe master HDD is a maxtor 40gig drive, the slave is WD 10 gig drive. XP Pro some how recognizes the partition on Drive D, but not on Drive C. BIOS recognizes all 4 drives.
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  7. 04-22-2003, 04:21 PM #7
    BipolarBill
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    You've lost your partition table on the C: drive. That's usually fatal. If you have a copy of Partition Magic, it may be able to save the drive contents, but that's not certain. At the very least, you would have to try using CHKDSK or SCANDISK to try.

    Honestly, I would assume the worst and plan on reinstalling. Since you have two drives, using Ghost or Drive Image in the future will prevent these things from being fatal.
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  8. 04-22-2003, 04:56 PM #8
    Midknyte
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    I would run some diagnostics on the drive. sounds like it might be failing. download the powermax tool.

    www.maxtor.com
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  9. 04-22-2003, 05:50 PM #9
    Strawbs
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    can you install XP on the secondary drive and boot from there, then copy the needed files out?

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  10. 04-22-2003, 10:25 PM #10
    lucy
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    I ran powermax on the drive, it had no problem. We might have to reformat because there are files on drive D that my friend wants to preserve.

    Lucy
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  11. 04-22-2003, 10:37 PM #11
    BipolarBill
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    Try this:

    http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html
    MS MCP, MCSE
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  12. 04-25-2003, 11:07 AM #12
    lucy
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    I boot from the XP startup diskettes again and ran chkdsk /r on the C drive, even though it said partition is UNKNOWN on C. When it's done (no error found), I ran FIXBOOT and after that I could boot to XP with no problem. The next thing I did for my friend was applying XP Pro updates so this problem will not happen again. Thanks for all your help.

    Lucy
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  13. 06-21-2003, 02:01 AM #13
    kasdolf
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    i got two cp's, both with legal win xp. how can make a make a bootfloppy for the other one that has, unmountable_boot_volume

    where do i find checkdisk and fixboot?

    help me i am a n00b at operating systems
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  14. 06-21-2003, 07:17 AM #14
    BipolarBill
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    Originally posted by kasdolf
    i got two cp's, both with legal win xp. how can make a make a bootfloppy for the other one that has, unmountable_boot_volume
    Right-click the floppy in WinXP and select format. Select "Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk"
    where do i find checkdisk and fixboot?
    If your XP is really legit, they're on the CD. You have to boot from it and run the Recovery Console.

    You can download XP bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com , but you still need the CD.
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  15. 06-21-2003, 11:56 AM #15
    AllGamer
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    i'll Low Level Format the Disk, then make a normal partition from scratch

    i7-3970X, Corsair H80, 32GB G.SKILL, ASUS RAMPAGE4 Formula, VG278H(3x27")+3D Vision2, EVGA GTX 690(x2), OCZ ZX1250W, 256GB Vertex4(x2), Seagate 3TB(x5), Antec LanBoyAir, Logitech G510, G600, Z560THX, T.Flight Hotas, PZ35, Sennheiser PC163D, TrackIR5
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