Still Can't fix this unmountable boot volume problem in Windows XP

robertsmcn

Member
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?
 

johnjkr1

Platinum Member
Jan 10, 2003
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You can easily test out the hard drive by running the full diagnostic from the drive maker. If it passes, it should be ok. Many time the unmountable boot volume issue can be solved by running chkdsk several times. If that does not work, you will need to reinstall. If that fails you will need to reinstall, same as you did before, just be sure to use the latest drivers for the serial ata, chipset, etc. And I would avoild putting any unnecessary programs (norton) before testing it for a few days (of course, get all the windows updates). The unmount boot volume error is generally random, but software usually causes it to occur.
 

robertsmcn

Member
Mar 15, 2004
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Thanks, Johnjkr1.

But, can you elaborate on how to run the diagnostic? How do I run it? Can I do it from BIOS because I can't get Windows to load as of now.

Also, when you say reinstall, what should I be reinstalling? Windows XP? In fact, the hard drive has very little important info on it right now so I'd prefer to do a complete reinstallation of Windows. If I do that, don't I have to uninstall it first?
 

johnjkr1

Platinum Member
Jan 10, 2003
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The diagnostic would be on a floppy. In this case, you would go to seagate's website, get their seatools diagnostic, and it will make a bootable floppy, it does not involve windows in any way. That should show your hard drive is ok. You can also run memtest to make sure your system memory is ok, it is a dos program as well.

I always like to clean install windows, so all you would have to do in order to do that would be to boot to your xp cd, press enter to install, it will find your old install and you press ESC to continue, then you destroy the partitions (and all your data), recreate the partitions, format the drive and you are off to a fresh install.
 

robertsmcn

Member
Mar 15, 2004
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I'm going to troubleshoot on Friday night. If none of the other things work, I'll try a fresh installation of XP Pro as a last resort.

Thanks for the help.
 

23skidoo

Golden Member
Jul 14, 2002
1,894
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Try this before you do a complete reformat. Use the os install cd just like you were going to do a fresh install, press F6 to install the SATA drivers off the floppy and let Windows go through the "starting Windows" dialog, press enter to install XP, press F8 to accept the license and then press R to repair the existing copy of Windows, provided the install CD can find it. If it doesn't find it then I would recommend using the Seatools utility to do a complete low-level format of the drive and start all over again with a fresh partition.

Once you start the Repair process it will act/interact just like a fresh install, prompting you for the Product ID Key, settings, etc; the only difference is if it works all the stuff your friend installed should still be there.
 

robertsmcn

Member
Mar 15, 2004
86
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Okay, sounds like a plan.

I made a bootable floppy of DiskWizard Startup Edition from Seagate's website. Seagate recommends using this setup disk when installing new drives, which admittedly, I did not do when I built my friend's rig. I didn't install any drivers from Seagate at all. Perhaps this is the disk that has the necessary drivers to fix this problem.

I also downloaded SeaTools desktop utilities to check if the hard drive is bad.

Thanks, everyone. Stay tuned within the next few days and I'll post my results. Crossing my fingers...
 

johnjkr1

Platinum Member
Jan 10, 2003
2,124
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I do not recommend using any software from seagate other than the diagnotic or the low level format. It is not necessary to install the drive overlay software, in fact, it will cause more problems then it is worth. Also, hard drives do not need drivers.
 

23skidoo

Golden Member
Jul 14, 2002
1,894
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Yes you can do a low-level format of the disk using the SeaTools utility disk set. You need to download the .exe from their support site and have a couple of floppy disks ready; when you run the .exe it makes a basic boot floppy and a second floppy with the actual utilities on it.

I have'nt run their utility in a while and each of the drive makers has a different terminology; I believe Seagate's is pretty straightforward, like "erase drive" compared to Maxtor's "write disk pack".

That's a nice helpful link, Geniere and I agree completely about using only the diagnostic utilities from the manufacturers.
 

robertsmcn

Member
Mar 15, 2004
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You folks are a wealth of information.

I'll try running SeaTools and see what happens.

I'm doing all of this tonight so stay tuned....
 

robertsmcn

Member
Mar 15, 2004
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Well, we tried many things yesterday.

First, I replaced the SATA cable with another and got the same results, so as I suspected, the SATA cable was fine.

Then we ran the SeaTools diagnostic. There were four different tests we had the choice of running and we did all four and passed with no problems, so it appears that the hard disk is fine.

We then booted from the Windows XP CD and pressed F6 and installed the SATA drivers from the floppy disk. Afterwords I pressed R and started running chkdsk. I don't know if this is normal, but chkdsk was up to like 72% and then it quickly went back down to 50% and then took a very long time to get back to around 63% when I lost patience and decided to do a clean install of Windows.

So, we did that but this time during the installation process, we got the following Hardware Installation (!) message:

?The software you are installing for this hardware: WinXP Promise SATA378? IDE Controller has not passed Windows Logo Testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP.

Continuing your installation of this software may impair or destabilize the correct operation of your system either immediately or in the future. Microsoft strongly recommends that you stop this installation now and contact the hardware vendor or software that has passed Windows Logo Testing.

Do you want to continue installing the software for this hardware? Yes or No"

We pressed yes and continued with the installation with Windows XP.

But, the worst part is that after XP finished installing, the New Hardware Detected bubble popped up three separate times with Device Installer Error messages, telling us that "Windows could not load the installer for diskdrive, contact your hardware vendor for assistance." We got the same message for the CD-Rom and then the battery. And now, the CD-Rom doesn't appear when we go to My Computer. It shows a C: drive for the hard disk and an A: drive for the floppy, but there's no D: drive or any other drive indicating that the CD-Rom is even present. What's going on?? This is worse than the Unmountable Boot Volume message. We never had any of these problems with the first Windows installation. We now put a CD into the CD-rom drive, the light goes on for a second or two and then nothing happens. I rebooted into BIOS and the CD-Rom drive is present there. This is getting crazy. At this point I don't know if it's all Windows XP problems or driver problems or what?
 

dman

Diamond Member
Nov 2, 1999
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Based on your descriptoin, it sounds to me like a bad driver or memory issue (Too fast or bad). Download memtest and give it a go, if it fails at all then it's the memory. If not, bad driver or harddrive.

MemTest86

FWIW, my laptop harddrive was defective and the diagnostics passed fine as well as chkdsk. Eventually there were some bad sectors that showed up and I was able to get it replaced. Prior to the swap, I'd get the unmountable boot volume randomly when I rebooted. Every time I did, I had to boot of the XP CD and run chkdsk /p, and when it was done, fixboot c:, then it worked fine for a while (no sign of problems).

The new drive has been working fine for a few mo's now with no problems so I'm positive it was the drive but I had no way of proving it.

Good luck.
 

gutharius

Golden Member
May 26, 2004
1,965
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I have the same problems when I have my ECS Motherboard set to a clock setting of 132. try setting the bios to fail safe defaults. It may be a bios issue...
 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
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boot to the xp cd, select r to go the repair console
log into your adminstrator account as prompted

type in

fixboot<enter>
follow instructions

type in

fixmbr<enter>
follow instructions

type in
chkdsk /r<enter>

type in
exit<enter>

and restart your computer let chkdsk do it's thing, this will likely fix you up as I see this at least once or twice a month, unless you have a fried hard drive (or bad format) this will get you back up.