WINDOWS suddenly unbootable

[harley3344]

I woke up and went to turn on my comp.... and boom it reboots constenly at the windows load up screen. the three bars go across the screen 4 1/2 times and then it says very quickly ( had to take a pic o it to read it) UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME is what it said. i did the fixboot with windows disk and didnt do anything, then i tryed the chekdsk and currently trying chekdsk /r
thanks or any help

 

[MrCoffee]

looks like you found this already http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555302/en-us tell us how that works out.

 

[cedjunior]

You may have to just do a repair install. That will not effect your programs and settings, although you will need to reinstall all your drivers.

 

[Osiris]

You can boot to the XP cd and when you see the Welcome to setup press the letter R
You will get a dos prompt
Then type "chkdsk /p" without the quotes and hit enter
When that is done type "fixboot" and hit enter
"Y" and enter at the prompt
Then type "exit" and hit enter
The system will now reboot into Windows

If for some reason that don't work for you, you can boot to the recovery console like above and...
Type "chkdsk /r" then enter
When done type "exit" and hit enter.
This will take longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.

 

[harley3344]

i did all of the above except replace the wire.. and ive been useing that for a year now and no probs so i decided just to reformat. its trying to install now so i home that it works

 

[harley3344]

it didnt work.... now i wish i wouldnt have reformatted. im ordering a new cord but thanks for u help i hope this new cord wokrs, ill keep u up to date on newegg theres no data on what kind of cord i need.... can someone help me out. ATA 133.



EDIT: i need to knowas soon as possible how to tell the diff between 40 and 80 on newegg they dont have anything to do with that unless im missing it.

 

[MrCoffee]

its quite simple, IDE cables (the original ones) had 40 pins and 40 wires corresponding. later IDE cables (from EIDE on i think) used an additional 40 wires for grounding so that higher transfer speeds were possible without data corruption (still with 40 pins of course).

I very much doubt that you have a 40 wire cable as these are basically obsolete and have been for nearly 10 years.

Example of a 80 wire IDE cable: (note the thinner wires and coloured connectors)

Example of a 40 wire IDE cable: (note the thicker wires and non colour connectors)

 

[MrCoffee]

I take it you reformatted from the recovery console because you need to get rid of your current partitions and boot tables. Just doing the reformat in the windows install probably wouldn't help.

Of course it might be that there is actually a hardware error with your hard drive. If the reformat from the console doesn't work get diagnostic soft from your drive manufactures web site.

 

[harley3344]

i replaced the wire that i had been useing for a year now and it worked ( replaced with an 80). how in the world could it run for a year with the 40 wire cable and then one day just not want to boot? but anyways thanks for the help


edit. now i assume that there was just a prob witht the singular ide cord because i was useing the orginal cord thatcame with my mobo, but i did try a diffrent ide cable and it still had the same problem. it would have been highly unlikely that both of them were 40.

 

[MrCoffee]

I'm not sure I understand your current situation, you've changes the ribbon yes?
Is it working now?

Its very easy to tell the difference between a 40 and an 80 conductor ribbon, check out this comparison. I'd be VERY surprised if the ribbon that came with your mobo was a 40 conductor ribbon concidering your running ATA133.