unmountabe_boot_volume.....help

ok, my nephew just bought;

Abit AN7
2500 barton mobile
2 sticks 256 hyperX 3700
Asus 9600 SE
Maxtor 80gb SATA HDD

we assembled it (grinning anxiously), set the bios to onboard SATA and selected to install the scsi support software from the XP boot selection, chose the Sil 3112A drivers and proceded to install winxp. The comp gets as far as loading what appears to be all the support files then goes to the device error screen instead of windows install.

the device error screen is the one that shuts windows down to save hardware. similar to the one you get when you change a major piece of hardware.

the error reads "unmountable_boot_volume"

i checked the harddrive on my comp, and it's fine I formatted the drive with my comp and still get the same error.

anybody ever run into this? any advice would be greatly appreciated

Did you enable SATA jumpers on motherboard?
Check the MoBo manual which jumpers exactly need to be connected for SATA controller. Check if the HDD is properly connected too.

X74

there doesn't appear to be any jumpers on the board for the sata. it is enabled however in the bios and the drive is being detected. I've changed sata cables which made no diff, also made sure the drive is properly pugged in. I also disconneted the usb from the header and removed the modem which is the only card besides the vid card.

One thing I noticed is that the cpu is set at a 133 bus and 6 multiplier which only gives 800. I set the bus to 166 with an 11 multi for the default speed of the 2500+ barton mobile. These changes made no diff.

Is the HDD set to master?

yes, I formatted as a master on my secondary SATA.

good question though, and thanks for the reply

trying taking out the second stick of mem and reinstalling your os
i experienced that problem and it was because of a bad dimm2 slot on the mb

If your running XP or 2000 you can boot to the command console and try running fixboot and fixmbr. This usually takes care of it.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixboot.mspx


http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/.../home/using/productdoc/en/bootcons_fixmbr.asp