BleepingComputer.com: unmountable_boot_volume error

Greetings all and those that help. I am having problems with my Dell Inspirion 1300 laptop. I was surfing the web Saturday and suddenly started getting that family of groups of malware, that is of the antivirus soft group. Antivirus suite to be precise. It took over all my options to end task and shut down, so I eventually hit the power button so I could reboot in safe mode and use my malwarebytes that I have stored on my flash drive. To my amazement I received a BSD w/ unmountable_boot_volume on every option from the F8 menu. Tried the recovery console from start up and received the same. Eventually found an very old xp home installation CD but to no avail it does not have a menu prompt so I cannot type "R". Tried the disc anyways and it runs, but when it gets to the Starting windows screen I get another BSD that doesn't say what it is. Just says something about adequate memory or hardware/software issue. Been searching for some bootable discs but really not sure what one or if that will help. All appreciation in this matter since I have not been having ANY issues with my HD.

Possible hard drive problem.

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287 (or http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ind...ive+diagnostic)
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.

Well looks like I am unfortunate. It is a Toshiba hard drive. Go ahead with the IMGBurn download or am I REALLY stuck?

I would try chkdsk /r from the RC.

How to Create a Bootable XP Recovery Console CD - http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic276527.html

How to use CHKDSK in the XP Recovery Console - http://pirules3.14.googlepages.com/recovery_console_chkdsk

Louis

As stated in my first thread, I do not have the capability through the regular recovery console,...I get the same Unmountable_boot_volume when I run that from the initial boot menu. I downloaded the ISO and IMGBurn but know instaed of going through the initial start up I am getting a blinking cursor line in the upper left corner of the monitor.

Probably your best option is to slave the drive in another computer (or use hard drive enclosure) to see, if the disk is readable at all.

ok will do. But if the other computer is a vista, that won't matter? back to work tomorrow so my replies will be intermitant, being I am using the wife's.

Quote

No, it doesn't

Looks like I need to try something else. It seems that my wife's desktop is a SATA (?) connection, where as my laptop is IDE. Although if I had the money I suppose I could get the USB adapter.

most desktops still include an ide connector usually used for cd or dvd drives. Look for a ribbon cable going to the optical drives.

Another option would be to try to access the drive from Ubuntu CD: http://www.smartestcomputing.us.com/topic/...__1#entry147112

If your are using Windows XP + AVG antivirus + you have SIS chipset then file C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\SISPERF.SYS may have been sent to the virus vault (this was a false positive from AVG, now fixed in todays updates)

Fault symptom is computer continually restarting with BSOD 0x0000007B.


See topic "BSOD 0x0000007f after AVG puts SISPERF.SYS in vault" for more

Rescue CD from AVG should help to fix it