So my familys computer is broked!

It boots fine until the windows xp loading screen, then it BSODs.

The BSOD only stays up for a split second, then the machine reboots.

They claim there was some clicking previously, but I didnt hear that.

Actually I just tried turning it on again and I heard a faint squeak come from the hard drive.


So yea, Im lost as to what the problem might be. Any ideas?

I think you can disable that it reboots after a bluescreen in the menu that comes up when pressing F8 while it boots. The error codes will often give you good google results.

You can try a repair install from an XP disk as well. It just installs fresh over the old installation. Settings and programs are the same.

I was honestly surprised to not see TE's name on this thread...

Is this an XP machine? Try running CHKDSK (chkdsk /p /r) from the recovery console.

I would attempt to run XP in safe mode first, or attempt to run with the last known configuration... have you installed any new hardware since the BSOD occurs? If not you might consider running the repair utility on the Windows XP installation disk or reformatting the machine... it's unlikely it's your hard drive considering the hard drive is able to spin up to the point of allowing XP to partially boot... perhaps as stated above there may be a bad sector on the hard drive in that case I would run chkdsk from the Windows XP repair console or safe mode... depending on the response you get.

chkdsk wouldn't work Mr. Banwaste.

He's probably getting that weird error message that stars with a M.

Which means windows boot fails.

Which means new HDD.

how old is your computer? if it was made since, like, 1998 the hard drive should be reporting a SMART error if that's the problem. Unfortunately there's really no way to be certain unless you do a reinstall of XP first.

If the hard drive is fried it should crash a long time before the welcome screen.

checkdisk would indeed work because checkdisk records an index of bad sectors on the hard drive so windows can work around them. It's a vestige from the days before hard drives had reserved sectors but it's still very much functional.

Assuming your motherboard's BIOS supports it and has it turned on (as in, check in BIOS).

could it be a RAM issue? check the RAM to see if any of them are bad

Granted it would, but MB's problem sounded a lot like mine when I got my WD HDD. It had too many bad sectors, gave me that error, and I ended up replacing it with a very nice Seagate.

Ok so after some poking:

The BSOD I managed to get to display without restarting once. The error was unmountable_boot_volume

I cant get the computer to boot a disk. I never get the "press any key to boot from cd" prompt.

is the CD-ROM drive listed before the hard drive in the BIOS boot order? is the computer new enough to support CD-ROM booting?

Its windows XP and yes I have the CD Rom set to boot first.

The "Boot from disk..." thing pops up, but does nothing.

Try changing the boot sequence in your BIOS to have it try to boot from the CD first before booting from the hard drive.

[Bah, I'm slow :(]

What do you mean it does nothing?

There are a potentially huge number of things that could be wrong here. We need more information about the diagnostic process.

When trying to boot off of the XP CD, does it show the 'press any key to boot from CD' prompt, which then does nothing?

or does it attempt to boot off of the CD without asking you to press a key first?

And you were never specific about the "until the XP loading screen" part. Can you see the XP splash screen at all, when booting without a disc in the drive? Does it fail *after* showing the splash screen?

Can you boot off of a DOS boot floppy? Does the same thing happen when booting off of a Linux LiveCD?


It could be BIOS corruption, it could be a bad hard drive, it could be as benign as a corrupt bootsector (which is a pretty huge point of failure for even the XP CD, since it checks drives for NTLDR *first*)

No it doesnt even say that. it says
Boot from CD:

and then nothing. Next comes the boot options (safe mode, safe mode with networking), and then the WinXP splash screen. This is where the BSOD appears. This all happens whether or not I have a disk in the drive.

I dont have a DOS boot floppy, so I dont know. Ill try to get one of those. I also dont have a Linux Live CD >_>

"UNMOUNTABLE BOOT VOLUME" issues can often be remedied by running a simple FIXBOOT (fixboot c:\) from the recovery console, if the drive itself isn't bad. However, seeing that you're unable to even boot to CD/DVD that isn't going to be much help right now. I would suggest going to a friends house and downloading and creating a bootable CD/DVD (or borrowing one of theirs) to see if that works. Your optical drive could be bad (amongst other things), but it's a first step to ruling things out. After we have established that much we can look in to other options, such as running a memory and hard drive test or even running FIXBOOT (assuming that another disc actually works).

If you have spare computer in the house with a similar config as your own, you could try disconnecting the hdd and putting into the other computer as see if it will boot or not.

This is what I did when I was having trouble installing XP on my mother's computer. Her computer also gave me a "Boot from CD..." error where it just hanged and did nothing. When I put the HDD into my computer (without my hdd connected) it booted up just fine so I concluded that it was a glitch with the motherboard. After replacing the motherboard with a new one I got off the net, her computer finally booted up and was able to complete the XP installation.

Okay well I havent tried switching the hard drive out to my working computer yet, but I did make a boot disk which also did not read.

Ill try it with a boot floppy tomorrow and if that doesnt work ill try switching the drive out.

Is all of your memory detected in BIOS? I suppose that in theory a bootable disc could fail to boot due to defective memory (I'm assuming that bootable media requires memory). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Maybe you should try your memory sticks in all possible combinations to see if the computer will boot to disc then, before replacing the optical drive itself. Also, you can boot from disc without the hard drive being connected with most, if not all bootable discs, so I would recommend doing that if the memory test doesn't work (maybe a bootable Windows disc actually requires the hard drive to be functioning properly...not really sure).

This is literally EXACTLY what my old hard drive was doing earlier this year. It ended up being bad sectors on my HDD, so I simply used another hard-drive to boot windows, and salvage from the nearly bricked HDD. I can still access the unbricked sectors on that HDD to this day.

Tried the hard drive in my computer, same error. Think I should buy a new hard drive? Also, I couldnt get that drive to boot as a slave with IDE. My main drives (with vista) are SATA. could that be an issue?

Wow, that's the pits. If you can't get it to boot as a slave, then there's got to be more damage than we originally thought. No idea what do from here. That sucks.

What do you mean by the "same error"? Are you referring to the "unmountable boot volume" error or the inability of yet another optical drive to boot from disc? You're going to have the "unmountable boot volume" error regardless of what computer that you place that hard drive in to. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that the hard drive itself is "bad". Are you able to boot from disc in the 2nd computer? If so, you need to run CHKDSK (chkdsk /p /r) from the recovery console. If you're still unable to load the operating system, run FIXBOOT (fixboot c:\) from the recovery console. If neither of these work then you most likely have a bad hard drive (you can confirm this by running the Drive Fitness Test from a bootable disc. Don't just assume that a hard drive is bad before trying such things. I save my company thousands of dollars a year by using these simple steps. Also, don't assume that just because CHKDSK & FIXBOOT give you access to your operating system that your hard drive isn't on the verge of failing (you should still run the DFT).

Sorry I should have specified:

I barely can read the BSOD (setting the bios to halt doesnt work), but I assume its the Unmountable boot volume.

And yes, I cant boot from an optical drive.

This is a dumb question, but I've forgotten before: did you make sure to switch the boot order to the CD first?

Trust me, I wasted an entire two hours because of that once...

On the 2nd computer, are you able to boot from disc before you put the problem hard drive in? If you can boot from disc before putting the problem hard drive in the 2nd computer but not after, you most likely have a bad hard drive. If you can't boot from disc on the 2nd computer before or after putting in the bad hard drive, then you have a bad bootable disc.

Yes happydud i did


Mentat- its already telling me I have an unmountable boot volume.

Im going to try to attach it as a secondary drive again and see if I can fix that. However, the last time I tried that my computer decided to boot off that drive instead of my drive. Guess i gotta poke around in the BIOS

Don't forget to check the jumper settings on the drive itself.

Yea I did that too :p

Look under boot options, and specify the Hard Drive to boot off of as yours, not the new one.

But, yeah, I like the chkdsk /p /r + fixboot or fixmbr if that doesn't work. I would do that first, then try to slave it if that doesn't work.



***. In fact, if that does work, you should buy a new HDD, just to be safe, or at least back up your data. Ask your family the PC has tried to run chkdsk on start up in the past. You can also finds logs of this somewhere, but I'm not sure where.

So I booted up my copy of windows with the drive plugged in, however it doesnt appear in comp mgmt. under the disks section. The only thing I can think is either the drive is completely toasted, or thers a jumper conflict just causing the drive to not show up.

BUMP ANY ADVICE! BUMP

Well, if it consistently gets as far as the windows loading screen, and then dies, I'm pretty sure it should show up in computer management. I would definitely take both drives out and make sure that the one is set to master and the other slave. Or before that, just make sure both show up in the bios.

I would also try taking your HDD out of your PC, and then try booting from the XP CD on your PC on the bad HDD.

You may end up having to format with a Windows 98 boot disk if all else fails. Spin Rite might do the trick, but it costs more than the HDD and it's success is not guaranteed.

Someone else had said it might just be a jumper conflict preventing it from being shown. Should I disconnect my working secondary drive? Thats SATA...

Hmm, if that's a SATA drive, that it's not a jumper conflict. The one should be master of it's IDE channel, and the SATA should be master of it's own channel.

It could be that the jumper is just set incorrectly though. If it's on cable select and it's on the slave part of the cable it won't show up. Make sure that the jumper is in the "master" position and you won't have any problems like that. If you look at the drive it should tell you where to place it to set it to master, either near the jumpers or on the label.

I would definitely look in the BIOS first and see if the bad IDE HDD is showing there. That would be more useful that it knowing if it showed up in computer management.