Need help fast, trying to help a friend boot his computer...

[50]

Hello, my friend has a virus or something and when he starts up it says unmountable boot volume. I told him to make a boot disk and right now he's in dos. Isn't there a command you can type to load windows? Thanks!

 

[johnjkr1]

You can boot to the xp cd and get to the recovery console and try chkdsk or chkdsk /r a couple of times. Other than that, format.

 

[Slikkster]

It's probably a simple fix. This error frequently appears when something is amiss in the "boot.ini" file, the file that tells Windows where to look for its installation files. I'm assuming he's using Windows XP. You need to boot to the XP CD, which probably means going into the bios first and setting the boot order to CD first in the list of boot devices.

Once that is set, put the XP CD in the drive and boot up. Let it go through its initial startup routine "Setup is checking your drive" or some such and it loads drivers. Eventually it will come to a screen and stop.
It will ask if you want to repair windows or install Windows. Type "R" and Enter to enter the "Recovery Console".

When Recovery Console starts, it will ask you which Windows installation you want to repair. I'm assuming he only has one, so type in the number 1 and hit the enter key. (If he has multiple installations of xp, choose the one that needs fixing by its number).

Now, you will be asked to enter the Adminstrator password. He'll need to do that correctly.
Once that is done, you will probably be at a "C:\Windows" prompt.

Now, you're in Recovery Console mode.

Now, do this (cut and pasted from another website)


Then type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter

When that is done type "fixboot" and hit enter
"Y" and enter at the prompt

Then type "exit" and hit enter

The system should now reboot into Windows

 

[23skidoo]

Or, you could take it as far as Slikkster says but instead of repairing through the recovery console, go ahead and press Enter to install Windows, press F8 to to accept the license agreement and THEN use the Repair option if the XP install detects a previous version of Windows on your drive. It will run just like a fresh install, but all your files, user profiles etc will still be there when it's done.

Of course you should also check all the cable/power connections to the hard drive to make certain it's not just something that's worked it's way loose....