BSOD in XP: Unmountable boot volume? Problem solved!

[RIGorous1]

What the hell is this prompt anyways?

I don't know what happened to my other computer but I can't start windows... I see the system go through POST and all but when I see that Windows XP icon come up it goes immediately to the BSOD. I get a prompt that says I can go to safe mode, safe mode with networking, start windows normally, but no matter which one I choose I can't even get into the OS to diagnose the problem? Got any suggestions? I know its software based, but I'm stumped right now....

Rig

 

[RIGorous1]

any help

 

[RIGorous1]

hrm... nobody?

 

[rip22]

boot up in command prompt and run: chkdsk /f

Reboot.

 

[cleverhandle]

What, if anything, did you do before the problem started? That error can be caused by changing drivers for disk controllers or by disk corruption, and probably other things, too.

 

[RIGorous1]

I don't know what happened... my gf was using it and "mysteriously it crashed"

I don't believe her, but she swears she didn't do anything... I tried running chkdsk with my A: boot disk but I can't get to the C: what should I do...

 

[cleverhandle]

I don't think DOS/Win9x chkdsk will work. Have you tried booting from the XP CD and using chkdsk in the recovery console, as rip22 suggested?

 

[bigpow]

My XP does that all the time. :|

here's a quickie:
1. boot using XP CD
2. choose 'r' (repair console)
3. look inside c:/windows/system32/config
4. find six files (without any extensions), those are the broken files (move them or rename them)
5. look inside c:/windows/repair, copy the same six files into prev. folder.
6. exit/reboot

You should be able to go to your windows (just enough so that you can backup/move your data), at this time you'll need to re-install some/all drivers, applications and settings.

Good luck!

PS: Consider using Ghost/Disk Image to create frequent backups

 

[dexter333]

Mine did this a few weeks ago. The partition table got messed up. My boot partition was of type "Unknown." I said screw it and just formatted.

 

[RIGorous1]

ok I ran chkdsk and it found "one or more errors"

now if I rename those 6 files what are my chances of getting things back to normal... do you think I had a head crash or something? should I just replace the hd? what are the changes that it was hardware faulty and not software? what are the odds?

 

[RIGorous1]

alright everyone I was messing around with some of the help commands in dos and I ran across fixboot ... so with nothing to lose it worked! my gf's computer works again! Woohoo thanks for your help everyone!

good thing I didn't format the hd like that other guy!