Hello, I am at my wit's end trying to fix the dreaded unmountable boot volume error.
Usually I can find the answer I'm looking for by googling and I have googled this one to death and tried just about everything.
I'm trying to fix my friend's laptop, (A Compaq Presario m2000) that WAS running windows xp home edition. We'll be happy to restore it back to factory, don't care about the data just want to get it to work again. We think it was a virus, rather than dodgy hardware installation.
Windows doesn't load at all, it just reboots after the blue screen, so obviously I can't do it through the start menu.
Safe mode with command prompt doesn't work, it just runs lines and lines of text then reboots. F8, f10, alt f11, f2, R, ctrl R, none of these take me to the system recovery. I gather from the other answers I have read about this problem that I need a windows xp boot disk. Using my good computer I downloaded the six boot files that are made available for free, but they are .exe files and meant for floppy disk, I don't have a floppy disk drive (Nobody does these day) So they're useless to me. I wasted some time burning them to cd and and downloaded a program to help me create an autorun. I even tried to convert them to an ISO file. (I'm getting out of my depth here) Of course That didn't work.
I also paid for a download of a windows xp boot disk from webmaster.com and used roxio to burn img (ISO file) to cd. The usual remedies I have read do not work (Chkdsk/r fixmbr, fixboot) Are all invalid commands. All the drives other than A: drive are invalid, which is weird because I'm using a cd not a floppy disk.
I ALSO downloaded seagate's bootdisk, and burnt the img to cd and tried that. It ran some tests but they failed.
There's one more thing that has been suggested - delete all (fill with zeros) Will that also delete Windows and make the computer unusable? You can make fun of me for being a dummy and not understanding computers properly, that's why I'm here asking you smart people for help. If you think that would work can you give me step by step commands to do it please?
So I have spent many hours trying to find the answers myself, to no avail. If anyone has ANY suggestion I would greatly appreciate it. Or is this the end?
At the moment the sledgehammer looks good, and might actually cheer me up :)
-Rachel
Hi dere,
As u hv mentioned that as soon as you turn on the system u got the unmountable boot volume error, it indicates that the hard drive of the system has been crashed. You can try loading Windows XP again on the system but I don't think it will work. The only solution to this issue is you need to get the hard drive of the laptop replaced.
Thanks for the prompt reply. I guess the computer's beyond help, it's been a lot of trouble . . . But I suppose it would be cheaper and less of a headache in the long run to just do as you advise and replace the hard drive. (Is that very expensive?) Would that mean I could upgrade it to something better?
Many thanks once again :)
Oct 11, 2010 at 09:54 AM
Many thanks once again :)