BF2S Forums Dell Laptop problem

have you got the original windows disk that came with the PC? If yes, then lets begin....

Have the disk in the machine and boot off the CD.
Go through to the recovery console. (any good with DOS?)
if you dont know what you are doing type HELP and the available commands will appear.
What you want is the command FIXBOOT and possibly afterwards the command CHKDSK
use both of them and call me in the morning.

Scratch[USA] wrote:

Okay my cousin dropped off her laptop to me to "fix it".  You start it up and it directly asks if you want to start in safe mode or normal.  Either way you get to a blue screen that says
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

This is as far as I can go.  My next step is to run the recovery disk.  What exactly does this do?
This happened when she installed office 2000 on a XP machine.

Hate to break it to you but it looks like her computer is fucked. I got the exact same message before this summer and the blue screen. I couldnt fix it so I had to get a computer tech over an he had to replace the disk. S

Scratch[USA] wrote:

Thank you both, Karma for all.
Using the boot disk that will erase all on HD?
I need to grab here boot disk.

It will only erase all on the HDD if you run through the whole setup selecting format drive. You don't go as far as installing XP again.

Look for XP Recovery Console.

It is one of the first things to choose once you have booted off the disk.

Is it an OEM copy of windows or a recovery disk?

..teddy..jimmy wrote:

Scratch[USA] wrote:

Okay my cousin dropped off her laptop to me to "fix it".  You start it up and it directly asks if you want to start in safe mode or normal.  Either way you get to a blue screen that says
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

This is as far as I can go.  My next step is to run the recovery disk.  What exactly does this do?
This happened when she installed office 2000 on a XP machine.

Hate to break it to you but it looks like her computer is fucked. I got the exact same message before this summer and the blue screen. I couldnt fix it so I had to get a computer tech over an he had to replace the disk. S

I couldnt even enter the desktop on safe mode

..teddy..jimmy wrote:

I couldnt even enter the desktop on safe mode

Neither can I. 

Thanks for all of the help.  Hopefully I can get the disk this evening and give it a whirl.

I will post any results or resolutions

Last edited by Scratch[USA] (2006-11-16 12:15:11)

Okay question, I have the original Windows disk that came with the laptop.  I can not get it to boot from the CD.  How do I do it or what am I doing wrong??

Last edited by Scratch[USA] (2006-11-17 11:00:30)

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Scratch[USA] wrote:

Okay question, I have the original Windows disk that came with the laptop.  I can not get it to boot from the CD.  How do I do it or what am I doing wrong??

Right when you first turn the computer on you get the Dell logo and a progress bar underneath.  Hit the F12 key.  This will give you a menu and you can select to boot from the CD/DVD drive.

no luck doing this.  It will not let me choose boot from CD.   It is not looking good.

I wish I could post screen shots.  I hit power button and a blue Dell screen appears and at the bottom it has in small white print hit F2 to enter set-up.  I press F2 or i let it start its normal process it goes to a black screen that says  "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully . . . "  Choose start and safe mode or start normally.  With safe mode it starts to run some scripts and then freezes and goes to the blue screen that says Problem detected UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.
And this is where I am at.

i have the exact same problem.

okay I got to boot from disk.  I had to hold down F2.  I ran chkdsk and i now can get into safe mode.  What do i do now?
Sorry yall might have to hold my hand.

Last edited by Scratch[USA] (2006-11-17 12:36:38)

I am willing to bet checkdisk fixed a handfull of bad sectors.  If the disk is starting to get bad sectors you may want to save your self some headache and replace the drive and back the data up off the old drive while you have a chance.  Chances are that the drive will die soon anyway.  What ever caused the bad sectors will happen again.