15th October 2002
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME...... Computer failure in finals week. Typical.
So I turn on my computer one morning, the windows XP logo appears, the harddisk flickers schitzophrenically, and the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) appears, with some unintelligible information and the words, "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" at the top.
Uh Oh.
Not to eulogise, but reading through the internet posts on this subject, it would seem that quite a few people have had this problem. The final solution I found was not clearly explained anywhere, and so in the name of charity, I am replicating it here.
Backround first. I have an IBM T30 Thinkpad, which comes with Windows XP pre-installed on the Hard Disk, and therefore no bootup CD from which to launch restore utilities. This is a drawback of the T30 that I hadn't thought of before, and I strongly suggest you download the 6 XP boot disks whilst you still have a computer to do it with.
The relevant microsoft knowledge base article (with the misleading words "during an upgrade" in the title) is number Q297185
Now the first thing to do is to calm down, this doesn't mean everything is broken, it either means that you've installed something that isn't compatible with windows XP, at which point you should uninstall it and try again, or it means that some vital sector of your harddisk is corrupt, and needs to be fixed. The Catch 22 here is that to fix it, you have to have access to the computer, and the OS can't load because the harddisk is broken, so you don't have access.
In a few easy steps, here's what to do.
- First, go to Microsoft KBA Q310994 to download your version of the XP bootup disks.
- Setup the bootup disks on a working computer, you'll need 6 blank, reliable diskettes.
- Boot up the XP computer from the diskettes, and when you get the option, hit the button (usually "R") to go to the recovery console (which looks just like DOS).
- On thinkpads, you need access to the partition that contains Windows. In my T30, this involved typing the word "LOGON" and nothing else because I have only one account, which is the administrator account, and which has no password.
- Now type CHKDSK /R and sit back and wait as the system does a complete check of your harddisk. This took over an hour on my system as it ran into the corrupted bits of the harddrive and fixed them.
- Now remove the diskettes and type EXIT, whilst of course hoping for the best.
At this point, my problems where over, but apparently, if you have a corrupted boot.ini file, your system may still not boot, at which point you should do boot up from your disks again, but use the command FIXBOOT instead of CHKDSK the second time.
A related point: you may not have access to the AUTOCHK.EXE file which CHKDSK requires in order to run. You'll know this is the case because CHKDSK will ask you where it should look to find this file - you can download it from here or here. I had to do this and put it on a diskette so that CHKDSK would run.
So that lasted until about 2am last night, and I can honestly say I am happy that's over. If you have had similar problems, let me know below. Pain shared is pain, erm, shared. So don't hesitate.
Posted by nlvp at October 15, 2002 06:59 PM