Win XP SP2 UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUM

[HomeAppraiser]

My son was playing a video game on our HP AMD64 computer when he said it was slow saving. My wife said she told him to click OK to a Norton Security Center "Live Update Finished" pop up. He did then must have got impatent thinking the game had hung-up and turned off the power switch.

We recently installed Norton Security Center 2006 to update the original Norton Anti-Virus 2005 and it tends to slow things down. Time to buy more RAM, 512mb is not enough. Norton came up with a clean scan on Sunday so it is not a virus problem, windows is just farked. Now windows won't start properly, not even in safe mode.

We tried all choices on the windows how do you want to boot black screen (Safe, Last good config, etc) but it just keeps looping back to the boot screen.

Tried a Norton rescue disk, no go. It told us the error was an UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

Help.

 

[Slicedbread]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q297185

I am thinking you filesystem got messed up somehow, maybe while norton was updating system files.

Try the recovery mode option.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

We tried all options on the boot screen. Gotta love microsofts help page:

"RESOLUTION
To resolve this behavior, use the appropriate method" <-QTF It's like the film from LOST.

 

[KingofCamelot]

I've had this error in the past. Do you have a Windows CD handy? What I did was put in the Windows CD, and when it gave me the option to boot from CD, I did. Once in the Windows CD boot menu, wait for everything to load up. It should then give you an option to repair a Windows installation (R). Choose this option, and you will end up in a DOS environment. I've found that doing a "FIXMBR" command should fix the problem. Hope that helps.

 

[firewall]

Before fixmbr, try chkdsk. That has solved this problem for me in the past.

It might just be a corrupt file or bad sector, and there might not be a need to modify the MBR in any way.

 

[Slicedbread]

I was talking about this part...

Damaged File System
If the second parameter (0xbbbbbbbb) of the Stop error is 0xC0000032, then the file system is damaged.

If this is the case, restart the computer to the Recovery Console, and then use the chkdsk /r command to repair the volume. After you repair the volume, check your hardware to isolate the cause of the file system damage.

To do this, use the following steps:
1. Start your computer with the Windows startup disks, or with the Windows CD-ROM if your computer can start from the CD-ROM drive.
2. When the Welcome to Setup screen appears, press R to select the repair option.
3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the Windows installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
4. Type the administrator password when you are prompted to do so.

NOTE: If no administrator password exists, press ENTER.
5. At the command prompt, on the drive where Windows is installed, type chkdsk /r, and then press ENTER.
6. At the command prompt, type exit, and then press ENTER to restart your computer.For additional information about how to use the Recovery Console in Windows XP, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
314058 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/EN-US/) Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
If this procedure does not work, repeat it and use the fixboot command in step 5 instead of the chkdsk /r command.

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

Might be a bad hard disk drive. Try chkdsk /r command from the recovery console

 

[HomeAppraiser]

Thanks guys & gals. I used therecovery partition on the D: drive of the HP and that got it back. I have to reinstall my video card drivers and Norton, but it should be ok. Thanks again.

 

[HomeAppraiser]

Wiped the hard drive and reinstalled WinXP. Lucky it was just the kids computer so there was no importaint data lost. Hopefully having to re-play all their saved levels will make them think twice about killing the power. I have the Norton Internet Security 2006 Home Protection Pack with three installs. I hope this didn't waste an install or will Norton know that it is the same computer when registering online?