XP Boot problem

[Spud5437]

Hi everyone,

My brothers XP machine (just used for invoicing and MS Outlook) started going to blue screen yesterday shortly after turning on - it getting to the windows loading screen for a few seconds then the blue screen comes up.
The message reads 'A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

I have an XP disk but it just wanted to format. Is there anyway to get this working without wiping?

Thanks for the help

 

[carnageX]

Hi everyone,

My brothers XP machine (just used for invoicing and MS Outlook) started going to blue screen yesterday shortly after turning on - it getting to the windows loading screen for a few seconds then the blue screen comes up.
The message reads 'A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

I have an XP disk but it just wanted to format. Is there anyway to get this working with wiping?

Thanks for the help

If you have an XP disc that lets you boot into recovery console (even a Win7 disc would work), then you could try running a disk check:

chkdsk c: /f /r

 

[Spud5437]

I didn't see recovery console with the disk I used. I have my windows 7 disk at home so I will try that, thanks

What is likely the cause of the problem?

 

[carnageX]

Could be several things - partition table got messed up, bootloader corrupted, bad sectors... hard telling for sure.

 

[Spud5437]

When I get into the recovery console and try to run chkdsk/r it tells me it's an invalid parameter and chkdsk/p says the disk is write protected?

Anyone any ideas?

 

[carnageX]

Are you specifying the correct drive letter?

 

[Spud5437]

I only have the one hard drive in. but yes its c

 

[carnageX]

Is this off of an XP disc, or the Win7 disc?

Because if it's write protected, it sounds more like you're trying to hit the wrong drive letter. To verify you're hitting the correct drive letter (each command is on a separate line):

diskpart
list disk
select disk=# (where # = the number of the disk)
list volume

Take note of the Ltr column, and match up with the correct partition that would normally be your C: drive.

 

[Spud5437]

It was off the XP disk.
I have a new problem now, the drive has started making a loud clicking noise , a very unheathly clicking/banging noise lol
It seems the drive has died on me. never worry, this is the first time a hard drive has even completly died on me so I guess I'm not that unlucky, **** happens.

Thanks for all the help carnageX

 

[carnageX]

Yeah, clicking is bad lol. Hopefully there wasn't any important data on it... If there was... then that sucks lol. You could always try getting the data off of it by hooking up to another computer (Windows might freak out trying to access it, but Ubuntu or another Linux LiveCD would cooperate more).