Unmountable Boot volume (& the rest) 1

[Trd79]

I have been living happily with XP-Pro for the last month or two. However recently it has become more and more flaky, and today it coughed and died.
My system crashed while Media Player attempted to play an audio CD (won't try that again!). Upon re-booting I was met with a familiar blue screen of death and the error, UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.
I have read another post on this forum about the error and consulted the MS knowlege base. I have come to the conclusion that either my boot sector, or part of the drive has been corrupted/destroyed.
This is one of two NTFS drives in the machine. I am assuming that the other HDD has escaped unscathed.

Is there any way to recover my data from my broken drive. I have done this before on FAT drives, but have no experience of similar tools for NTFS.

I would like to access the data on my other drive. However the only other machine I have access to runs Win98 (which I can't mess with too much as it's not mine).
Is there any way I can read NTFS partitions with Win98?

Many thanks for any help you can provide.

I am interested in following up what caused the crash. I think it may be to do with explorer and my cdrw drive. I have mentioned the problems I was having with it in a response to a recent post "old CD shows up in explorer"
( thread779-242157 )

 

[linney]

You can do some research here if you have the time.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&querytime=8E-E&q=+UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME+windows+xp

http://groups.google.com/groups?sourceid=navclient&q=UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME+windows+xp

Here is a precis of what you might find...........




Unmountable boot volume. This error can occur during some Windows XP installations. Unfortunately, it can lead to a situation where you can't boot Windows XP, nor can you easily uninstall Windows XP and revert to your old operating system (e.g., Windows 98 or Me, etc.). Some people find that updating the BIOS fixes this problem; others find that disabling Ultra DMA, but leaving PIO enabled solves the issue (but slows down the system's disk performance substantially). Still others see problems after trying all of the above, as well as more Draconian (and usually ineffectual) fixes such as reformatting, replacing the master boot record (MBR), running the XP "fixboot" utility, etc., etc.

As it turns out, Microsoft calls the problem a feature "by design" and claims the purpose of this behavior is to prevent potential data loss due to the usage of an incorrect IDE cable for the faster UDMA modes.

This behavior may occur if the following conditions exist:

You are using an Ultra Direct Memory Access (UDMA) controller with your computer.

You are using a standard 40-wire connector cable to connect the UDMA drive to the controller instead of the required 80-wire, 40-pin cable.

The basic input/output system (BIOS) is set to force the faster UDMA modes.

To resolve this behavior, Microsoft recommends replacing the 40-wire cable with an 80-wire UDMA cable,
-or-
Try loading the 'Fail-Safe' BIOS default and reactivate the most currently used options such as USB Support.

For further reading, see Microsoft's KnowledgeBase article Q297185
"STOP 0x000000ED UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" Error Message During Windows XP Upgrade (Q297185)
Excerpt from this page:You may receive the following error message when you first restart your computer during the upgrade to Windows XPsize 6532 bytes, updated 10/25/2001 9:24:00 PM GMT)

After wading through a vast number of reports, it seems this problem happens most frequently when using AMI BIOSes and VIA chipsets (the latter has been on our "evil hardware" list for most of the last two years). VIA chipsets are well known to suffer from a number of shortcomings, not the least of which is a dependence on the so-called "4 in 1" drivers to enable high performance drive access. It appears these drivers may be an issue here, too.

In general, the best way to install these drivers is to download the newest version (using a different computer if your primary PC is incapacitated) from the VIA website, then install them as noted below and reboot. If this is not possible, you'll find older versions of the VIA 4-in-1 drivers on your motherboard CD.

To install 4-in-1 drivers
a) Extract and Save the drivers on a floppy diskette.
b) Near the start of the Windows XP installation routine, the system prompts you to Press F6 to install other drivers. Press F6, then insert the floppy to install the drivers. Windows XP, like Windows 2000, recognizes the drivers as SCSI -- this is normal. With any luck, your installation should then proceed without a hitch.

Our long-term suggestion is to avoid VIA as the maker of your next motherboard's chipset.

See also:

http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/1346.html

AND THIS





This is were i started to cry.....Windows then reported during boot "STOP
0x000000ED Unmountable_boot_Volume" Error.

I got this message even if i started using safemode....there was no escape
from the nasty little message ;-)

I then researched into the problem using my "backup PC" and found the
following MS knowledgebase results see 'Q297185'. Which was quite helpfull.

It suggested two causes, one of possible solution was the file system was
damaged, and cannot be mounted.

It then suggested that i should use the Recoever Console and use the 'chkdsk
/r' command to repair the problem.

Well i tried this, and the computer still would not boot.

So i then thought i had no option left but to reinstall windows.....

Part of the way through the installation process, when you first get the the
modern Windows style screen (hopefully you will know what i mean), i then
cancelled the installation, as i wasn't sure if i was doing the right thing.

To my surprise, when i re-booted, everything was working, and back to
normal, and haven't lost anything.

Maybe this may help someone else....i would be gald to know what i done to
fix the problem, maybe the installation process fixes the File system during
its checking process??





As far as accessing data have a look here. If you want the write version it costs $400 the read only version is free.

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/NTFSDOS.shtml

How to Perform an In-Place Upgrade on a Windows XP-Based Computer (Q314112)


HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console for Windows XP (Q307654)

Q307654 HOW TO: Access the Recovery Console During Startup
Q216417 How to Install the Windows XP Recovery Console
Q240831 How to Copy Files from Recovery Console to Removable Media
Q314058 Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console