fast help please with old compaq

[convergecult]

ok so my parents have an old compaq presario desktop and it has been making loud noises latley when you turn it on so i thought it was just dust build up so i took it out side and cleaned all the dust off came back in turned it on and it was fine the sound was still there but not as loud. tonight my brother turned it on to do homework and bam Unmounted_boot_volume error and will not even let me boot in safe mode...any ideas i need help quick.

 

[brinks]

http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?postid=416035

I wouldn't go straight to doing a 'Windows XP Repair Installation' yet...

...you'll want to do a chkdsk /r first, on your Hard Drive...then see if it boots up. You can do this in the Windows XP Recovery Console with the command line interface, accessible using your Windows XP Setup Disc.

This error can occur when you've got bad sectors on your Hard Drive, or when your boot.ini file is corrupt. Doing a check on your disk will only fix the first possible issue, but a corrupt boot.ini will require you to rewrite the boot.ini file, again using the Windows XP Recovery Console.

If you are sure that a corrupt boot.ini file is causing this error message, then you'll have to do a FIXMBR command in the Recovery Console to fix the master boot record. Alternatively, you can try rewriting the boot.ini file using the FIXBOOT command. Only do this if you are sure that your boot record is corrupt.

You'll need to be able to boot into your CD-ROM Drive first, in order to access your Windows XP Setup CD. Make sure you've set your CD-ROM drive as the primary boot device in BIOS.