WinXP Boot up problems: desperate to save data.

Hi all, ( I hope this is in the right place)

I've got my brother-in-law computer on my workbench and Its failing to load window XP Pro - NTFS partitioned. It trys but hangs on the very first windows screen. Eventually I get the evil blue screen of death saying "unmountable_Boot_Volume". I'm figureing a dead hard drive.

Of course they have failed to back it up and am begging that I try and save some of the files on the computer - especially the My Documents folder.

I've tried booting in with all the safe-mode options for it never makes it to a windows screen - just the above Blue Screen.

I've tried booting up to win 98 boot disc but it would see the C:\ drive. I wanted to try and redo the boot sector.

I then thought maybe I could try a new window install in a differently named install folder (this usually has worked in the past) but windows said the partition was damaged and I need to reformat - which of course will kill all their old files.

Does anyone have anyother tricks I can try????

Thanks in advance
Doug G.

Plug the drive into another system run a scandisk and pull the data off that way.
Rob

Robbie said:

Plug the drive into another system run a scandisk and pull the data off that way.
Rob

Click to expand...

Thats probably your only chance at this point. Go for it.

Matt

My guess would be that the file system is damaged...in order to repair it, you'll need to start your computer to the Recovery Console, and then run the chkdsk /r command to repair the volume. You can read up on the XP Recovery Console at the following MSKB site if you're not familiar with it's use...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058

great ideas! I'll get busy.

Doug

redduc900 said:

My guess would be that the file system is damaged...in order to repair it, you'll need to start your computer to the Recovery Console, and then run the chkdsk /r command to repair the volume. You can read up on the XP Recovery Console at the following MSKB site if you're not familiar with it's use...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058

Click to expand...

My thoughts excatly, I have had this issue and this fix works like a charm, Good Luck!!

You might also have luck by re-writing the boot sector of the drive. Log into the Recovery Console, and type:

fixboot
fixmbr
exit

That will write you a new bootloader, and then reboot the system. Good luck!

if all you need is Docs, you may be able to boot to DOS using a disk from here: www.bootdisk.com and copy the Docs to a floppy.

wont work for anything major obviously, but you should be able to save some word files that way.

edit: sorry, im retarded, didnt see you can't see the c:\ with the Win98 boot. But bootdisk.com does have a dos app that is supposed to let you read NFTS from dos, never tried it, but you many want to.

Thanks all,

The recovery console did the trick.

It did? It worked? Nice!! Congrats!!