unmountable_boot_volume

I have a Dell Dimension 2400 , running Win XP and have never had a single problem with it in the four years I've owned it. overall, it's been a great machine, I must say.

however, the other day, I was surfing for jobs when it froze-up.

I turned it off, then back on and recieved a "blue screen of death" with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME, claiming recently installed hardware or software is not working properly it then goes on to say I should start it safe mode. it takes FOREVER just to get it to actually boot in safe mode. I have even inserted the OS disk to try to repair, but get absolutely nowhere. I have not installed any hardware or software in ages on it and I'm at a loss what to do, as I have close to 40 gigs of music on it, half of which I cannot replace.

I finally got it in safe mode and am running AVG anti-virus currently.

any suggestions should the virus-scan turn-up nothing?

thanks

I would try a chkdsk /r and fixboot from the recovery console as per the following article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185

TEk

would I be able to do that in safe mode?

No - you will need to boot from your XP installation CD (and if necessary, may need to change the boot order within your BIOS).

TEk

this is weird:

in safe mode, when I try to bring up the command window, everything just freezes.

any ideas? attempting system restore now

okay..

did a system restore and it seems to have sorted it for the moment.

ran another virus scan and updated SpyBot --- I also have a corrupted file which I'm gonna delete

thanks for the help, Tek

It could well be that your hard drive is on it's way out. If you want to preserve your music, back it up now!

I would establish which manufacturer's hard drive is installed (via Device Manager), then go the appropriate manufacturer's website and download/install their hard drive diagnostics software (which you will have to burn to CD), boot from the CD and perform the tests. That will give you an indication on whether you should be looking to buy a new hard drive or not.

Good luck,

TEk

Download and run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility (they all run from floppy, so you don't need to get into Windows), and see what it reports. Here are the common ones:

Seagate Seatools

IBM / Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Maxtor Maxblast 3

Maxtor PowerMax

Western Digital Software & Drivers

Fujitsu Utilities

checked for the manufacturer, all it says is (Standard disk drives) and it says the device is working properly. closest thing to a name is ST380011A

also, this weird corrupted file is on my desktop "goob" no idea what it is, it looks like a generic folder. but it won't let me delete it "cannot delete goob: the directory is not empty"

and, SpyBot found something called "Smithfraud-C." which it didn't remove and says I need to restart and it may be able to sort it.

could the Smithfraud thing be affecting the computer's inability to delete this stupid corrupted thing? I'm kinda paranoid to restart in case I can't get it to restart properly

ran chkdsk

it says to run the orginal start-up disk, and select "r" to repair.

but when I insert the disk, it's not doing anything at all --- like it's not booting from the disk

am I doing something wrong?

okay, figured out that bit

what is a valid installation number?

how do I go about figuring out that?

okay --- I figured out that

when I go through the steps to repair, it keeps coming back to telling me that this file is missing or corrupted:

c:\windows\system32\config\system

then simply repeats the system does not have a ControlSet key and that the registry may be damaged.

I cannot even get into Safe Mode to try a system restore again

does this mean it's fried for certain?

Thje model number you posted indicates that you have a Seagate hard drive. I'd download the manufacturer's drive test software on another computer and burn it to a CD to use in testing the problem drive before doing anything else. If the drive is going bad, the more you try to use it the less likely you are to be able to save anything that is stored on it.

it's not responding to that, either.

what a conundrum I have on my hands here.

thanks for all your help, guys

cheers