Unmountable Boot Volume

[Lance]

*inhales*
Alright, I'm trying to fix a friend's laptop here. It's a Gateway from 2006 with an Intel Centrino Duo processor running (or trying to run) XP Media Center if that interests you.

Anyway, when it boots Windows, it goes to the screen with "Safe Mode", "last known configuration that worked", etc. When anything is selected, we get the XP loading screen followed by BSOD with the unmountable_boot_volume error, which quickly disappears as the computer restarts.

Apparently a chkdsk can repair this, but we have no way to run chkdsk, and have had no luck finding any bootable disks which include it (I don't even know if that's legal, if not that'd explain the difficulty finding it). No one seems to have any XP disks handy, either.

Any options we've missed? Probably. So I hope somebody here thinks of them.

Thanks in advance.

 

[gothroach]

Did this machine ever work properly with that OS?

I don't know how familiar you are with computers, but WinPE is excellent for this type of issue, and it's from Microsoft. Sometimes, you need the Windows install disks, but you can use either Vista or XP to make it.

 

[chapp]

Hopefully this doesn't come out the wrong way, but unless you get your hands on a WinXP disk to run chkdsk, you're going to have to reinstall Windows from scratch. Does your friend have the OEM Gateway CD that came with the laptop? You don't know anyone with a Windows CD? It doesn't HAVE to be a Gateway OEM CD, any Windows XP CD will work and is bootable. For instructions on how to run a chkdsk, read this:

http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=5097

 

[Coolhand]

It is very odd that you are getting an unmountable boot drive error when windows is already starting to launch. Your best bet is definitely using a WinXP disk to boot and repair the win install.

Additionally you can try to hold down f11 (maybe f8) during the windows boot and see if you can get it to boot that way and then run chkdsk. Just a thought.

 

[Passerby]

just use a live linux distro to run fdisk from and repair the partition

 

[Lance]

...apparently I'm not supposed to do anything else with it until Gateway gives the ok, so as not to mess up the warranty.

But yes, it was using the OS for a few years (as long as it's been owned, that is).

In the meantime, microdiscussion: am I the only one who doesn't like warranties on electronics? I've never had a case where a problem wasn't fixed better/faster by myself (admittedly with help from the internet oftentimes). You'd think the people getting paid for it would try to do a better job at helping out :\

 

[.[BORN]2kill]

Download the ultimate boot cd. run hard drive diagnostics to see if it is crashing.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/index.html

 

[Lance]

Alright, I went the Ultimate Boot CD route and found the right program on their - that did it, got the laptop up and running. Thanks guys.