HELP !! XP wont boot: unmountable_boot_volume

[kiwi-in-sweden]

Hi. I was suspicous that my laptop had a virus due to alot of hard disk activity on its own so I turned it off (and removed battery). I ran Nortons anti-virus (CD boot) and it seems clean. Now I'm wondering if Windows was doing an auto-update (without prompting me) and I killed it in the middle?

Possibly damaged the boot partition as now it wont boot up and the message reads:

Unmountable_boot_volume

Technical= STOP: 0x000000ED (0x8128EA68, 0xc000009c, etc)

It doesnt have a floppy drive but I have a USB memory stick. Is it possible to make a boot from this and then run some partition fix tool?

Any HELP much appreciated.

cheers
Kiwi-in-sweden

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Hello and welcome to Techspot.

Look HERE and HERE for an explanation of what is wrong, and ways to fix it.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:

 

[kiwi-in-sweden]

Still no luck

thanks for your help. I'm not sure if this is the problem but it makes sense that perhaps Windows has caused a problem.

I believed I had a virus due to alot of hard disk activity when i wasnt running anything but perhaps windows was being updated in the background automatically. I shut it down which may have damaged the MBR (master boot record) is it was being updated. I need to find a good tool that will look at the MBR and tell if its ok or not...ideas?

cheers

 

[howard_hopkinso]

If you boot from your Windows cd and load the recovery console you can fix the mbr from there. See HERE.

If you do a google search for fixmbr you will find lots of info about it.

Regards Howard

 

[danielb]

As above, many hardrives actually do maintenance when idle, mine always does. this would explain your HDD noise.

 

[kiwi-in-sweden]

MBR Fix

thanks. I did wonder about that but seem to recall it saying something about overwriting records? I mean - if it creates a new MBR - will it delete or damage any data on the HDD? (I'm not a techy) ..

cheers