Unmountable Boot Volume

I'm trying to fix a friends laptop computer, it has blue screen of death Unmountable Boot Volume error, It will not work in safemode, normal mode or even last known good configuration. I have tried to to boot from the cd windows XP home and choose recovery console to try chkdsk but it says AUTOCHK.exe can not be found, please find it.

I have tried fixboot and fixmbr

BTW I can't get into Bios, he set a password for it and he does not remember the password, we tried all of the passwords he could think off. It is out of warranty.

I wanted to do a repair install however the computer does not give me the option to do any repairs, on the partitions page it says,


C: patition1 [unknown] 76309mb (76308 MB FREE)
unpatitioned space 8mb

It gives me the option to delete or install.

Edited by KIPC, 20 February 2010 - 06:42 AM.

The fact that...the partition file system is listed as "unknown" and that the data reflects an empty partition with no data on it...says to me that either the file system (NTFS) or the hard drive itself has a problem.

Typically, the best thing to do is to employ data recovery software of your choice to move data files from the drive...before going any further.

Unmountable boot volume errors are typically solved by running the chkdsk /r command...except when they are too serious to be solved by such. Yours appears to be beyond chkdsk /r.

Unmountable Boot Volume - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555302

Louis

You'll need to remove that hard drive from the laptop and attach it to another system...to do any file recovery and/or diagnostic.

Edited by hamluis, 20 February 2010 - 08:57 AM.