messiah

My laptop has gone down after I removed some software to free up some space (a couple of games and some other bits and peices), now after a restart I get the dreaded blue screen.

I've tried recovery console (its XP SP2) and tried ckdsk which gets to 23% before saying the drive is unreadable - the windows setup routine says it does not recognise the format of the drive - it says UNREADABLE_BOOT_VOLUME OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT.

All my work is on the HDD, formatting is a no-no which is all it will allow me to do to get windows back.


HELP HELP HELP!!!

ChefDude

so you can get into safe mode with a dos box?

are you doing chkdsk /f to isolate ****e disk areas?

have you got another partition? in dos you can copy your files from the buggered partition to the okay one

you can get usb2 laptop drive carriages that you can plug into another computer - another way to get at your files, whilst only accessing the relevant bits of disk

Markus

I'm not sure if this will help you. Sounds as though you may have tried it. This might also be of use

messiah

I can get to th option for safe mode but it wont start in safe mode.

I've tried chkdsk /p - it gets to 34% before saying its hit a problem it cant fix.

ChefDude

i didn't think there was a /p option

messiah

markus - 2nd clicky looks promising, the first assumes you can get into windows

ChefDude

if i was really stuck and could only operate from dos, i'd use fdisk to create a partition and format it.
then copy stuff to it and then reinstall xp to the corrupt primary partition

i guess you have to try these things first.

messiah

cant get to dos - only the stripped down version in recovery console

will the "fixmbr" option help me out?

ChefDude

googling fixmbr comes up with master boot record.

you'd get "insert system disk" or some other error before the xp boot screen.

ChefDude

you've got to plug this drive into another pc.

if you've a spare ide slot, http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...=SEO&U=strat15

otherwise a usb2 2.5" hard drive carriage

or some such like.

it's the only way to get your data.

ChefDude

doesn't help you, but i did learn years ago - if it goes funny, back it up.
or do i want to lose this? back it up

sorry

messiah

i tried a couple of things of ms's website, fixboot detects that the drive is ntfs but upon restart it goes back to "unknown"

kilo_4que

No no no, forget all these fix softwares man. Get into Safe Mode and check Device Manager. Find any yellow question marks next to any devices and reinstall them drivers

Furthermore, remove and reinstall some of you otehr drivers anyway such as Motherboard, Graphics card etc.

I had this problem for a very long time and it turned out to be the silliest things such as graphics card drivers corrupt or missing

But do correct me im wrong guys which i doubt from experiencing the same problem on several occations

messiah

cant get into safe mode.

"UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME" is what I'm getting

kilo_4que

right ill tell you what to do, register on a forum called www.norbiesworld.co.uk

post on there

most of the times them guys can help you they are sharp including the main guy himself, Norbie lol

good luck

Markus

Not strictly true, if you can boot from an XP CD (Preferably XP SP2, be it an original or slipstreamed one) then you can follow the steps. I've done this before without being able to get into windows.

However, if setup is complaining about the boot drive, then this might not work either.

messiah

setup is claiming that the file system is unknown - althoug fixboot in recovery console will tell you that its NTFS, but upon restart it just goes back to unknown. I cant see an option anywhere that will save the settings...