Unmountable boot volume

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A friends laptop is getting this message regardless of which boot option he uses, to the best of my knowledge its the boot.ini file that is corrupt.

He does not have the windows disk but may be able to retrieve it from the person who has it.

If he can't get it then I am assuming he will have to get another copy of windows and do a fresh install.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Its a dell inspiron1000 laptop.

 

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Have you tried FIXMBR and FIXBOOT from the Recovery console?

Harry.

 

I can't get into anything whichever option I choose on his laptop it BSODS after post.

 

And for a Dell lappy you should really use the recovery disks rather than a random copy of Windows - unless, of course, the Windows load is not the original.

Harry.

 

he has given the disk that he said came with it to a relative in France

 

The recovery console is usually got at via booting from a CD - but unlike say 'restore' the version of the CD isn't quite so critical.

Harry.

 

Hm

This is beginning to sound like a non-standard load!

Harry.

 

would it be possible to restore the boot.ini file from my copy of windows? His is XP home mine is Pro.

 

he bought the laptop second hand

 

As long as you stick to those two commands it should be OK.

Harry.

 

I will try that but I think his Hard drive maybe on its way out and since he doesnt have the drivers I may have to download them from dell and get him to buy a new copy of windows and a new hard drive.

 

A duff drive would of course give the unmountable error (among other possibilities).

Harry.

 

if I can get FIXBOOT to work then I'll do CHKDSK and see what happens.

Cheers for the advice and confirmation

 

I was speaking with a Dell engineer who came on site a few weeks ago to replace a faulty RD1000 unit. He commented that the first thing to do in the event of a fault on any of their laptops is reseat the hdd. All but the oldest are on the outside with two screws.

Simon

 

Ooops.

 

Thats what I said double ooops for giving the recovery disk away.

 

It is usually rare for the recovery disk to still be with a second hand laptop. All too often the disks given away turn out to be copies of a standard OS - sometimes home-burnt copies!

Harry.

 

thats probably what it is, my friend did say it was a windows disk and that he got the laptop of a neighbour so my guess is that it was copy of windows.

 

It would seem it is a hardware problem (hard drive).

I did FIXBOOT and FIXMBR, I also tried to copy the boot.ini file from my Windows disk to the installation on the hard drive.

As a last resort I tried to do a fresh install and got the message the partition on drive c: is corrupt or damage and is unrecoverable. To continue installation press ENTER or ESC to CANCEL.

So I think it's caput.

 

Boot it up by pressing function(fn) and power, it should run the diagnostics (thats if they haven't been lost via a format).