Hi guys,

Wonder if anyone can help me.

Ive had the same PC for about 4 years now and it has always worked fine. I was running Win XP SP2 perfectly up untill last week. All of a sudden I now get the Unmountable Boot Volume Error everytime I try and boot.

At the moment I cannot boot at all, even in safe mode.

I tried restoring my PC to its factory setting using the Master restore discs provided by the manufacturer, and this worked for about 1 day. After a day I started to get the unmountable boot volume message again.

i tried to restore again but this time it failed when checking the C drive for consistency. I tried a few more times but had no joy. The hard drive was also making a few loud clicking noises. When I got advise from the place where I purchased the PC, they told me that the hard drive had failed and I needed a new one.

So I went out and brought a new hard drive and proceeded to install it intothe machine. After tattooing the new hard drive beacuse the master discs would not work otherwise I tried to restore again. It seemed to work fine and I managed to get into Windows. However as soon as I shut the PC down and restarted I got the same message again, even though it is a brand new hard drive.

I have tried everyhting I can possibly do to get it to work ut have had no luck. I haven't got a Windows XP disc to run the recovery console and at the moment have no means of downloading the 6 boot discs from the Microsoft site.

I'm no expert but I personally cannot see how the recovery console would work anyway as surely the windows install is clean as it was from the original master discs and onto a new hard drive. No settings or programmes were ran before I shut it down the last time before I started getting the essage again.

I read somewhere it could be a bios problem, or maybe the controller has gone on the mobo. Does anybody think this could be the case.

I reall need to get it up and running and would hate to have to fork out even more cash to take it in to a repair shop. I've already spent £50 on the new hard drive.

Any help anybody could give would really be appreciated. I am literally close to throwing the **** machine in the bin at the moment.

Apologies as well if this question has already been asked. I have found loads of solutions to preventing the error occurring on an existing hard drive but nothing in relation to a brand new one.

Thanks in advance guys.

Aces

I forgot to add. When I restore the new hard drive from the master discs it allows me to get into Windows everytime once, and everytime it seems to run perfectly with no errors at all. However when I restart or shut down the machine after this the error message comes up.

Oh well guys, I presume nobody has the knowledge. Least I tried I suppose

Sorry for the delay in replies Aces, but first things first....Welcome to the PCHF

In regards to the boot disks. The only reason you would need to get them would be if you didn't have a bootable CD of Windows XP. (The upgrade version is the only version not bootable). If you have the upgrade version - get those disks. At present, you've said you've tried everything you can think of to try and solve it yourself...but are you willing to not try something that could potentially save your computer?

The Recovery Console will give you access to the boot.ini file which is possibly corrupt. And yes, it is a new install, but the recovery cd's you have may have a corrupt image on them and while it works for 1 or 2 days, it will corrupt itself and make you think you've got a bad computer part inside your computer.

So...do you have a bootable windows xp cd? Or are you going to have to get the 6 bootup disks?

Thanks for replying, I appreciate it a lot.

I'm up for trying anything to get the comp working again, I just thought that as it was a new install and the PC always worked before, it wasn't a problem with the boot.ini file.

I read that Windows XP SP2 solved the unmountable boot volume issue and I was running it for quite a long time before the PC crashed. When I managed to resotre it a few days ago I managed to get SP 2 back onto it and it was working fine untill a day or so later the dreaded blue screen started appearing again.

It's a bit of a rip-off I reckon because the PC didn't come with a Windows XP disc, instead it came with a set of master discs from the manufacturer. I'm not sure I can name it here but lets just say its a famous brand that also has stores in the high street. I had a massive headache trying to get the master discs just to recognise the new hard drive. I had to tattoo it which was a major pain in the backside.

The only other 2 computers that I have access to are no use to me; they both do not have floppy disc slots or even space for one. I suppose the floppy is being phased out now because its old technology.

I managed to load Win Recovery Centre on the hard drive from my master discs, and when I start the machine now I have a choice of booting with windows or booting with Win Recovery Centre. When I choose the recovery centre I get the blue screen again with the Unmountable Boot Volume message. Does this sound like it is still a problem with the boot file, and do you think the floppy boot discs will still work if I manage to get them?

The only other thing I could think of is could the recovery console be booted from the master discs. It must be on there but I cannot see a way of accessing it other than installing it through Windows.

I'll try my best to get my hands on them. In the meantime if somoeone could post the instructions on how to fix the boot.ini file once I've got the discs I would really really appreciate it.

Thanks again

I still think the disks would be the way to go, as the current Recovery Console is running off your corrupt version of windows.

Failling that, you could try a low level format - but that still doesn't really tell us why it's happened on both hard drives...and i doubt it will work.

I tried the boot discs and the Win recovery console and as I suspected it didn't work.

I managed to get into the console but when I typed in the command: chkdsk /p or chkdsk /r I recieved a message reading cannot find autocheck.exe please specify the location of it. I tried everything like a:chkdsk /p and c:chkdsk /p but it could not find the file.

I also tried the fixboot command, which seemed to work untill I restarted and I recieved the message "NTLDR is missing".

I'm not sure what to try to be honest now. Does anybody know where I can locate this file autocheck.exe?

Any more ideas would be much appreciated.