- Mar 15, 2004
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First, let me apologize for this long post but I'm experiencing a frustrating problem with a recent PC build. Two weekends ago I built a new rig for a friend using the following relative components:
AMD 64 3200+
MSI K8T NEO -FIS2R motherboard
160GB Seagate SATA hard drive
Windows XP Pro
When we booted up for the first time, we went to BIOS, changed the boot order to read the CD-ROM drive first, put the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive, saved and restarted.
Windows XP Setup started loading its files and after a few minutes we started receiving a message stating Setup could not detect a hard drive. We surfed the web and found the troubleshooting tips telling us to press F6 when prompted to do so.
We restarted the Setup process, hit F6 when prompted to and then put the driver floppy into the floppy drive and pressed S. This is the floppy that came with the MSI motherboard that had the SATA drivers on it.
This seemed to solve the "couldn't find hard drive" issue since the floppy drive downloaded the drivers and Setup continued without any further hitches. We were then prompted to format the hard drive and then to partition it. I did one large partition in NTFS.
After this, Windows XP successfully loaded itself onto the hard drive and all went well. I did some minor tweaking in BIOS and then loaded several games onto the hard drive. My friend said all was going great for about two days when he booted up the third morning and got the following blue screen message:
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error
screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears
again, follow these steps:
Check to make sure any new hardware or software is
properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask
your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows
updates you might need.
If problems continue, disable or remove any newly
installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory
options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to
use safemode to remove or disable components, restart
your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup
options, and then select safemode.
Technical Information:
***STOP:0x000000ed (0x85e2f860,0xc0000032,0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Now, this seems to be a well-documented Windows XP problem as there are some Microsoft articles published on the issue and a Google search yielded many pages with similar results and advice. This link seems to be Microsoft?s main solution to the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;297185
In reading that article, I'm almost certain that my friend's problem is the damaged file system and not the UDMA controller issue.
Now, my friend tells me that he tried following the six steps from the above link to address the damaged file system problem, but that when he gets to Step 2 and presses R, he now gets a message stating that "Setup did not find any hard drives installed in your computer" and that his only options at this screen are to either exit or restart the computer.
This is where we're at now and needless to say we are at a loss. It's as though we're getting that first ?hard disk not recognized? message all over again. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice for this new problem? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Also, am I correct in believing that the hard drive is good if I initially was able to successfully install Windows XP and several games that ran fine for a few days?
AMD 64 3200+
MSI K8T NEO -FIS2R motherboard
160GB Seagate SATA hard drive
Windows XP Pro
When we booted up for the first time, we went to BIOS, changed the boot order to read the CD-ROM drive first, put the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive, saved and restarted.
Windows XP Setup started loading its files and after a few minutes we started receiving a message stating Setup could not detect a hard drive. We surfed the web and found the troubleshooting tips telling us to press F6 when prompted to do so.
We restarted the Setup process, hit F6 when prompted to and then put the driver floppy into the floppy drive and pressed S. This is the floppy that came with the MSI motherboard that had the SATA drivers on it.
This seemed to solve the "couldn't find hard drive" issue since the floppy drive downloaded the drivers and Setup continued without any further hitches. We were then prompted to format the hard drive and then to partition it. I did one large partition in NTFS.
After this, Windows XP successfully loaded itself onto the hard drive and all went well. I did some minor tweaking in BIOS and then loaded several games onto the hard drive. My friend said all was going great for about two days when he booted up the third morning and got the following blue screen message:
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME
If this is the first time you've seen this stop error
screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears
again, follow these steps:
Check to make sure any new hardware or software is
properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask
your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows
updates you might need.
If problems continue, disable or remove any newly
installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory
options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to
use safemode to remove or disable components, restart
your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup
options, and then select safemode.
Technical Information:
***STOP:0x000000ed (0x85e2f860,0xc0000032,0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Now, this seems to be a well-documented Windows XP problem as there are some Microsoft articles published on the issue and a Google search yielded many pages with similar results and advice. This link seems to be Microsoft?s main solution to the problem:
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;297185
In reading that article, I'm almost certain that my friend's problem is the damaged file system and not the UDMA controller issue.
Now, my friend tells me that he tried following the six steps from the above link to address the damaged file system problem, but that when he gets to Step 2 and presses R, he now gets a message stating that "Setup did not find any hard drives installed in your computer" and that his only options at this screen are to either exit or restart the computer.
This is where we're at now and needless to say we are at a loss. It's as though we're getting that first ?hard disk not recognized? message all over again. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice for this new problem? Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
Also, am I correct in believing that the hard drive is good if I initially was able to successfully install Windows XP and several games that ran fine for a few days?