Hi,
I'm new to this forum and hoping someone can help.
I have a laptop that won't boot into Windows XP. It get a BSOD with unmountable boot volume. When I boot up from the installation CD, I can't repair or reinstall as my C: drive is not recognized.

I've tried chkdsk /r and just about every other option in recovery console and nothing works it says drive is invalid or doesn't exist. My boot order is also correct in my BIOS.

I created a bootable CD from bartPE but it must not be working right because I can't boot from it. I am thinking if I can create a bootable CD with fdisk on it, I can delete my partition. But nothing is working for me.

Any help is much appreciated
Thank you

How did you create it?

Is that a 0x0000007b STOP ERROR on a Blue screen?
Is the laptop newish/has it a SATA drive?

jaclaz

Hi, I followed these instructions
Getting started

This page will help you create your very first BartPE CD. It assumes that you are using Windows XP.


Make sure that your system has about 500MB of free disk space!


Download the latest PE Builder version (self-installing package) and install it.


Start PE Builder (pebuilder.exe). When you start PE Builder for the first time it will ask if you agree with the license agreement.


Now PE Builder will ask to search for windows installation files. If you don't have your windows XP setup/installation files on your system you must insert the original Microsoft Windows XP installation/setup CD at this point.
The files you have at c:\windows are not installation files. They are your already installed files!
Click "yes" to start searching. PE Builder will now search all fixed- and CD-Rom drives for Windows installation files. This will take some time. When more than one valid location is found, a dialog will appear where you can select which location you want to use.


At the main PE Builder dialog, select the "Burn to CD/DVD" option. When you are using an erasable medium, make sure that the "AutoErase RW" option is enabled. The "burn using" option should be set to "StarBurn". Select your CD writer device from the Device list.


Hit the "build" button. PE Builder will now ask you to create a BartPE directory, answer with "yes".


The license for your Microsoft Windows XP product is shown. Read it and agree to it to continue.


PE Builder will now start building BartPE. This will take a few minutes.
You will see a lot of files getting copied and/or decompressed, the ISO image build and the data recorded to your CD/DVD writer.
If the data verify was correct and there where no errors reported you can boot the CD/DVD!

STOP: 0X000000ED (0x81b1ad98,0xc0000006,0x00000000,0x00000000)

You won't like this , but if CHKDSK does not work:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297185/en-us

the possible causes are:

• a really "bad" hard disk
• some problem in the cable/connector

Next step should be to disassemble the notebook, verify cable/connections and if it still does not work, use an adapter to mount it in another PC as slave and attempt salvaging any data you can with recovery programs.

You won't be able to access the drive from a BartPE any better than from Recovery Console/SETUP disk.....
....in other words, in this particular case I don't think that having a working BartPE will take you any nearer to the solution .

jaclaz

I've seen similar cases in the past. A virus would remove the boot sector and boot files on the root of the C:\ drive.

Sometimes it would go a bit further and remove the files from c:\windows\system32

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Always do a backup to all your documents before attempting a repair!

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There is a non-destructive method that you can try using tools that you already have, on this case you only need the windows XP install CD.

- Boot from this disc, choose the R option to repair the system (it should open the recovery console)
- Type FIXMBR
- Type FIXBOOT
(more details here: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/termsf/p/fixmbr.htm)

After these steps, reboot your OS and start from the disc again.

Now instead of selecting the "R" option, you should continue forward and before you start installing windows there should be a dialog box mentioning something like "Windows is already installed on this machine, do you wish to repair it?"

At this question box you should select the option that allows you to let the windows disc attempt a repair install.

If you don't see the second repair box and windows only mentions something like "Windows will now start installing" then it means that no windows OS was recognized as being installed on your system and therefore you'll need a full install from scratch.

On this case, I'd recommend wiping out the partitions to start from a clean state and then install.

As warned at the top, only do these actions after a backup. If you don't have a safe boot disk then you can download knoppix or similar (link on the bottom of this topic)

-------------------------------


This method should give a fresh breath of life to your windows install but beware that is not a 100% foolproof process. On some cases I've noticed that windows was badly corrupted and a repaired install was not enough to restore a good looking OS.


If you need badly to recover your documents and you're having troubles in building a windows based boot disc, then I would recommend trying out a linux based image which are legal to download from the web: http://www.knoppix.org/

Hi,
I had already tried fixmbr and fixboot. They both say the C: drive is not recognized. I need to create a disk where I can delete the partition and format the drive. Will this knoppix help with that?
Thanks

If you already have the XP install CD then it's all you need.

When you install Windows, the install procedure will give you the option to remove all partitions and format them as expected.

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But one important question: Does the disk has data that you want to recover? (documents, images, music, etc..)

Maybe this helps (unfortunately only Nuno, not dsmitty84:

Nuno,
the drive is NOT recognized properly.

This has NOTHING to do with MBR or bootsector.

If the problem is in the controller, repeating attempts to access the drive on that machine may corrupt data beyond recovery.

Drive needs to be taken out and connected to a known-to-be-working machine through a known-to-be-working cable/connector.

jaclaz

Ahh.. so it be missing the proper SATA drivers as we lack more informations

I wrongly assumed dsmitty84 was using the OEM install disc and these usually come with all the needed drivers.

--------

If it's not a physical problem as mentioned above and your drive is working good then you will need to create yourself an Install disc with the proper drivers included.

The Driverpacks project can help you get this done: http://driverpacks.net/

Or you can try out the UXP project which will produce an Install disk with a good collection of SATA drivers under a few clicks: http://winbuilder.net/download.php?view.24

No, that would produce a 0x0000007b STOP ERROR, he is having 0X000000ED



jaclaz