Blue Screen After Reboot

[greasydame]

I got impatient and pressed the start button on my computer...nothing happened. Normally just one push would restart the computer but not right now. I also want to add that sometimes the pointer flashes the hourglass but then it goes away in a few seconds.

[greasydame]

I restarted the computer and well, hello blue screen you SOB Right now I'm running the Seatools diagnostic that Midknyte mentioned. What could I do different when doing the factory restore and installing the BSOD update?

[greasydame]

SeaTools Long Test PASSED

[Midknyte]

Fairly certain it's not a drive issue at this point.

So you did another factory restore and installed the BSOD patch right after it? You might want to borrow a floppy drive just to do the BIOS update.

You can also try Memtest86+ on UBCD. I don't think it's a memory issue, but it's possible.

[greasydame]

So you did another factory restore and installed the BSOD patch right after it? You might want to borrow a floppy drive just to do the BIOS update.

Yes, right after. Could I take the floppy drive from another PC and put it in mine? Would that somehow mess up the other computer?

You can also try Memtest86+ on UBCD. I don't think it's a memory issue, but it's possible.

I ran the test and it passes with zero errors.

Thanks for your help

[Midknyte]

Could I take the floppy drive from another PC and put it in mine? Would that somehow mess up the other computer?

Why would that mess up the other computer? You're just installing it to flash the bios, then putting it back into the computer you borrowed it from.

[SirKenin]

That error supports what I told you in the other thread. An "unmountable_boot_volume" is a corrupt hard drive. Get an XP Pro disk, boot into the recovery console (it won't give you a Windows install to log into because it won't be able to find it, thus the error) and run chkdsk c: /r

Don't bother trying to get a directory listing. If you do it will report back "unable to enumerate directory structure".

If you hook it up to another computer it will tell you it's an "unknown file system" and report a size of -1 MB or less. (in severe cases it won't report a size at all).

The "unmountable_boot_volume" error tells you that the $MFT (Master File Table) is damaged. It's the index, telling the drive where to find all the data. The drive is a huge collection of magnetized on and off states. The first few gigs of a drive store the index information, telling it where to find each one of those states. When the index becomes damaged, it can no longer find those "bits", thus it returns that error.

Chkdsk c: /r will scan the drive, one bit at a time, re-adding every entry to the index. When it's finished, sometimes it has to be done twice (even three times), the drive will most likely have to be defragmented. On top of that the chkdsk utility may stop and have to be restarted several times, returning an error of "This volume appears to have one or more unrepairable errors". If the drive heads are damaged, or if a portion of the platter is damaged, it will stop at the same point each time. This is particularly common on Western Digital and DiamondMax 8 hard drives.

[SirKenin]

I just read the Seatools thing. What that does is diagnose the integrity of the drive through short and long SMART tests. It completely ignores the $MFT in it's tests.

In other words, it will tell you the mechanical fitness of the drive, but not the fitness of the partition or $MFT.

The results are good. The drive isn't punched. No RMA. Bonus. It now further confirms that a chkdsk repair will resolve your issue.

[mustypines]

Try going into the task manager using Ctrl+Alt+Del, and under the processes tab, look for explorer.exe and end it if its there.

The hold the windwos key (between Ctrl and Alt) and press the letter R.
Type explorer.exe

This will force a restart the the explorer service, see if that works.

We had to do that to computers at my campus until the tech team got a chance to re image the computers.

[mustypines]

Sorry for the spelling, was in a rush.
And of course that is to try if you get the blank desktop again.

[Broni]

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error usually doesn't mean hardware problem, but system files problem.
How was restore to factory settings done? CD, or recovery partition?

[Midknyte]

Just a thought. What was the original hard drive's size? Since your restore is only XP Gold (no service packs), it doesn't have the proper 48-bit LBA support for drives over 137GB. Try creating a smaller system partition (like 40GB) and see what happens.

If it's a plain XP setup CD, maybe you can make a slipstreamed SP3 disc.

[SirKenin]

Just for confirmation.. I dealt with that same error again today on a Dell E530. "unmountable_boot_volume" blue screen. The drive was an Hitachi Deathstar. Hooked up to another computer it was inaccessible, it didn't even show a size in my computer. Right clicking on it hung the computer.

One pass of chkdsk c: /r from the Recovery Console fixed it. It booted right up after that.

And just so you know.. If it's XP or XP SP 1 it will still install no problem. It will simply format to the maximum size of 136 GB, no matter how much bigger your drive is.

You can go following wrong advice if you like. You can chase phantom viruses that don't exist. Or, you can just fix the problem and get on with your gaming or whatever else you like to do with your computer.

Edited to add:

There's a computer company around here that brags about "quality" and "trust". They like bashing other people. I fixed one of their so-called "quality" computers the other day. The thing was a disaster from hell.

The point is this. No matter what they say, what they try to make you believe, or what they put in their name, on their signs, in their advertising or even in their signatures, it doesn't mean squat unless the proof is in the pudding so-to-speak.

[Midknyte]

. If it's XP or XP SP 1 it will still install no problem. It will simply format to the maximum size of 136 GB, no matter how much bigger your drive is.

That's true if it's a plain XP installation disc. BUT if it's an IMAGE, that could be a problem. The image software would just create one partition 160GB, but the image itself might be expecting a smaller drive. greasydame stated it was a RECOVERY disc.

[SirKenin]

That's true if it's a plain XP installation disc. BUT if it's an IMAGE, that could be a problem. The image software would just create one partition 160GB, but the image itself might be expecting a smaller drive. greasydame stated it was a RECOVERY disc.

No, greasydame stated it was a factory restore.

I got fed up with trying solutions so I just did another factory restore.

On that Compaq, the factory recovery is run from the second partition, the recovery partition, of the hard drive. It's accessed by pushing F11 on startup.