Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Fixing UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME on Windows XP

The daugther of one of my friends had a PC that would not start. Not that I like to mess with that - had done that too often - but helpful as I am I brought the PC home.

It failed with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DEVICE STOP: 0x000000ED (0xaddress,0xC0000006,0x00000000,0x000000)

I searched the net. Found several articles but not really anything that seem 'correct'. Finally, I found an article on Experts-Exchange.com. Well, I could not get to the answers as I do not have an account, but sometime Google's caching feature are very useful...

So this is how I did it based on the answers I found -

Start the recovery console. If you do not have it installed - or when that version does not work - like in this case, boot from an installation CD and select R for repair. You can easily mix languages - I used an English CD on a Danish Windows

Run these command -
chkdsk c: /r /p
fixmbr
exit (to reboot)

That is it.
at

136 comments:

  1. Anonymous30 October, 2007 15:28

    Thanks a lot man!

    ....u really save my day :D!

    -Gav-

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mr. Allen05 December, 2007 00:49

    Thanks for that... It worked and saved my pc

    Cheers,

    Tyler

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous15 December, 2007 23:09

    Thanks you you made my day for my laptop.

    Pascal Quebec Canada

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous24 December, 2007 15:51

    Saved my bacon. Thanks for making this info easily available.

    I dunno if it was redundant, but I did FIXBOOT before FIXMBR.

    -Rachel

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous24 December, 2007 23:04

    Repaired a laptop today. Used "chkdsk" and "fix boot" without the letters. Worked well.
    The use of /p or /r were not recognizes

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous29 December, 2007 11:23

    What if when i press R, computer shows that it's examining drive C for a couple of hours and nothing happens.Could this take so long?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Unknown02 January, 2008 22:20

    If the original XP installation CD is lost, can I use any XP installation CD?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Per Østergaard03 January, 2008 13:54

    Answer to: If the original XP installation CD is lost, can I use any XP installation CD?

    Yes, you can.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Per Østergaard03 January, 2008 13:56

    To Igor: Yes, examining the drive can take very long time. Just let it run and enjoy a cup (or many cups) of coffee.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Per Østergaard03 January, 2008 13:58

    It actually also saved my own day once more during Christmas. The PC, my sister in law owns, did not boot. Nice simply to look up my own article and repeat the steps. I love such a nobrainer and I could spent my time on eating some more candy (which we do a lot in Denmark at Christmas).

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous06 January, 2008 01:35

    THANKS ! ! ! ! !

    IT WORKS.

    GOD BLESS YOU.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous16 January, 2008 20:50

    In the U.S.A. there is a saying,"You Are The Man". Well you "ARE THE MAN" for your help. My Laid Off co worker brought her computer in for two of us to look at. We ran, chkdsk c; /r / p When it was done it canme back that it had found and fixed one or more errors. When we went to run , fixmbr, It cautioned us that we could loose stuff. We exited out and did a reboot. Problem Solved!

    I'm sure my friend would offer you a kiss in gratitude now that she can send out resumes again.
    Thank You
    HUNTER

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous19 January, 2008 03:37

    Thanks mate, this problem had been annoying me and my family for a while and now it seems to be all good! Cheers and keep up the good work. :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous21 January, 2008 19:42

    Having this same problem... this is great info, but now I can't even get the PC to boot up to the "unmountable_boot_volume" screen. Are we out of luck or is this something that can be helped?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Anonymous22 January, 2008 01:27

    You are a genius...you saved my butt...thanks so much, from Canada!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Anonymous31 January, 2008 05:14

    Tester,
    I had that problem too, but I chose f12 and then chose boot from cd/dvd drive. Hope that helps...it took me a few times to figure it out...
    Good luck and thank u for the solution! I was very close 2 throwing my laptop out!
    Marcella :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. kellyadam31 January, 2008 16:32

    thanks for the advice - it has partially solved my problem. i didn't do the command fixmbr because of all the cautions, but i am now able to boot up and log on. but now as soon as i log on i get a Windows Product Activation message that says "A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error Code: 0x8007007e." When I hit "ok" it logs me off immediately. I don't know much about computers so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. oh - and safe mode still isn't working either. thanks again for solving my first problem!
    kelly

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anonymous04 February, 2008 08:06

    Thanks man, it really help a lot

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous06 February, 2008 15:03

    Hi there! It looks like this is the website with all of the answers. Sadly, while this is the easiest suggestion for me to understand, I still don't understand. I don't know what "start the recovery console" means and I do not know how to use commands. Can you simplify it for a girl who has NO IDEA WHAT SHE IS DOING? I am on a blue screen.

    Thanks in advance!!!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Per Østergaard06 February, 2008 16:37

    Hi angelee.

    I think it will be too much of an effort to try and document the procedure in such detail that it can be done by anyone. This is not the purpose of this blog, anyway. So I would recommend that you ask somebody you know for help. Microsoft has a support article on how to use XP Recovery Console - try this address http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/en-us

    Best regards - and I hope you manage to get the PC running again.
    Per

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous07 February, 2008 06:24

    Hey,
    My computer is also doing the same thing, I tried to fix it, but I didn't get anywhere?

    I'd really appreciate anybodys help.

    My email is: mitch.o.1989@hotmail.com

    Thanks a lot from BC, Canada!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Per Østergaard07 February, 2008 08:51

    Hi Mitch

    I have also had situations myself where this did not fix the problem. E.g. I had some power problems in my house and that smashed 1 GB RAM and my RAID totally. In this case I decided to reinstall the computer. I could have restored the backup - that is theoretical ;) - but the PC needed a reinstall anyway. Naturally, I had a backup of the important files like pictures, emails etc.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous10 February, 2008 09:10

    Hey Per Østergaard,

    Thanks for your reply. When you say reinstalled the computer, what do you mean?

    My PC was more of my secondary computer as I mainly use my MAC...so I didn't have much important stuff on the PC. Would reinstalling windows fix the computer? or is it more severe than that?

    Again thanks, any help would be appreciated!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Per Østergaard12 February, 2008 15:09

    Hi Mitch

    By reinstalling I meant, insert a bootable cd, wipe the disk and start all over with installation of the operating system. In my case, I inserted a new disk so I still could read data of the old. I selected this path as I took the opportunity to use Vista instead.

    There is also another alternative: You could do a repair installation. Again, you have to have a Windows XP (with SP2) CD, boot from it and select repair, when that option appears. In this way, you are more or less doing an inplace reinstallation e.g. the repair will make sure the correct files are there and drivers will be installed etc.

    Finally, you computer could have some kind of a hardware problem - in that case the most likely cause is some failed RAM. But only start looking in this direction if the repair fails.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous23 February, 2008 19:45

    Thanks a lot!!!

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous06 March, 2008 09:01

    Great info, worked like a charm.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Anonymous13 March, 2008 17:08

    I had this problem yesterday morning and I was afraid I'd have to buy a new laptop to get my work done for my site. I found your solution and it worked perfectly. Thanks a lot, man! I owe you big time.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Unknown18 March, 2008 18:47

    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!! Iv been working on this for days...My Computer Works Perfectly Now...

    ReplyDelete
  29. Anonymous27 March, 2008 11:26

    OMG you saved me man...my brother was coming home in 2 hours...he woulda killed me...i sorta owe you my life then XD

    ReplyDelete
  30. Anonymous04 May, 2008 06:22

    Thanks SOOOOOOO much! You save my life...

    ReplyDelete
  31. Anonymous08 June, 2008 17:42

    tankz.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Anonymous17 June, 2008 15:57

    OMG TY SOOOOO MUCH Im soooo serious... what seemed like a costly problem was fixed... dude THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  33. Anonymous06 July, 2008 05:40

    ok, how do you start the recovery console

    ReplyDelete
  34. pRamirYX10 July, 2008 03:41

    thanks!! that was cool....

    ReplyDelete
  35. Anonymous21 July, 2008 21:57

    You made my day.
    10xs a lot 4 your help.

    ReplyDelete
  36. Anonymous11 August, 2008 04:22

    This sounds like it would be a great fix for my problem, as I have the same BSOD and error message... except that I don't have the disc. *sigh* The disc that came with my computer is an e-machines recovery disc. The disc has my OS on it, but it won't let me use it to get to the recovery console. The only other XP disc I have is for XP Pro and that won't let me run chkdsk on my c drive. The only windows installation it lets me do anything with is on the H drive, something called MiniNT, and if I try to specifically put in chkdsk c: the thing runs for over an hour and never reaches completion. Does anyone know anything else I can try? My computer doesn't have an A: drive so I can't even make the boot disks from Microsoft. I could try making a boot CD, but honestly, I'm not totally computer saavy, and when I read instructions on that, I'm a little confused. Most of them seem to be obviously written for people with more knowledge than I have, and I don't want to bug them for the simplistic "me = in depth computer dummy" explanations. So yeah, if there are no other options, all I can think of is to slave the drive into another computer so I can back up the files (I saw someone else had done this and it worked for them) and then reinstall my OS.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Anonymous11 August, 2008 15:41

    Update on my situation (posted 8/11) : I tried one more time with my XP Pro disc and this time, I got it to check my C: drive. I had to put in chkdsk c: and then let it run for five or six hours. Then, when I next prompted it with fixboot, it did the fix on my C: drive instead of the H: drive as it had been doing before. So, for the time being, I'm back on my computer. However, I don't know if that's a permanent fix, and I'm kind of paranoid now to turn off my computer again. Should I still consider reinstalling Windows just to be safe, after I backup my files (which I'm planning to do anyway because not backing them up after so long was just stupid on my part)?

    ReplyDelete
  38. Per Østergaard11 August, 2008 22:22

    Hi evolutiongirl

    I'm glad your PC is running again. If you experience the problem again, you know how to fix it. If you experience it often, you may have a broken driver or most likely some flawed hardware (RAM could be a good guess).

    The problem you just solved should not cause you to reinstall Windows.

    Per

    ReplyDelete
  39. Anonymous12 August, 2008 06:46

    Thanks so much. Your post really helped. I'm still backing things up on CD now and looking into getting a back up external drive because of my insane paranoia, now. I'm glad I won't have to reinstall.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Anonymous13 August, 2008 05:48

    okay, this problem recently happened to me, however i have a few questions before i try this fix

    should i hook up my hard drive to another computer as slave, then save any important data before i try this fix so i dont lose any data? or is it safe to do this before that.. i already ordered a usb sata/ide adapter to do so as the only other computer i have uses ide, while my newer one uses sata

    next is how do i create a boot cd from another computer? will it work even though it has a different product key? (my broken comp had xp preinstalled, so i dont have a boot cd)

    thanks in advance

    ReplyDelete
  41. Per Østergaard14 August, 2008 09:54

    Hi Anonymous

    No, you should do it on the PC having the problem.

    I you want to move to new PC hardware, you must have a proper license. If the original PC had an OEM-license, the Windows license is only valid for that hardware and cannot be moved to a new hardward.

    Anyway, any CD will work in the repair process - at that level the product key does not matter.

    Per

    ReplyDelete
  42. Anonymous18 August, 2008 02:55

    thank you so much...only thing that worked!!!

    ReplyDelete
  43. Anonymous27 August, 2008 13:19

    Hey.
    I have a dell laptop, and it wont boot. I tried to do the following steps:

    chkdsk /p
    then chkdsk /r
    and when i started it up again, it wouldn't start it just keep restarting. can any one help me ?

    ReplyDelete
  44. Anonymous27 August, 2008 13:21

    Hey.
    I have a dell laptop, and it wont boot. I tried to do the following steps:

    chkdsk /p
    then chkdsk /r
    and when i started it up again, it wouldn't start it just keep restarting. can any one help me ?

    ReplyDelete
  45. Anonymous28 August, 2008 18:54

    Hi!

    My laptop was working just fine until I got the BSOD - unmountable_boot_volume

    I followed your suggestion but at chkdsk I got this message - "The specified drive is not valid, or there is no disk in the drive."

    Then I tried fixboot it said "cannot find the }system drive, or the drive specified is not valid."

    What can I do?

    Thank you got your help.

    bert

    ReplyDelete
  46. Anonymous02 September, 2008 09:46

    thanks , i don't need to reinstall .

    ReplyDelete
  47. Anonymous05 September, 2008 03:16

    hey hey hey
    thank u very very very much
    it's work 100% :)

    keep helping gud bless u

    ReplyDelete
  48. Anonymous20 September, 2008 20:41

    Received the BSOD with unmountable_boot_volume when I ran some Windows updates and restarted the computer for the changes to take effect.

    My troubleshooting efforts are running into two major stumbling blocks: 1) Running in safe mode with command prompt consistently stops at iomdisk.sys. And no command prompt is available to me.

    2) Upon attempting to boot to either the Resource CD or the XP Reeinstallation CD: I receive "Selected boot device not available" -- despite my ensuring that the "Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive" is enabled in the boot sequence settings.

    Any suggestions for how I can get past the preceding stumbling blocks?

    Thanks in advance for any assistance you can offer.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Anonymous15 October, 2008 20:42

    Thanks
    It works fine for me
    Lior from ISRAEL

    ReplyDelete
  50. Unknown25 October, 2008 12:48

    much appriciated man ... really thanks for that

    ReplyDelete
  51. Anonymous18 November, 2008 19:26

    Thank you very much, it worked great.

    ReplyDelete
  52. Anonymous10 December, 2008 00:33

    Thank god for Per Østergaard ...

    Apparently I had a problem with iomdisk.sys during startup - but it actually failed with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

    Great help - it worked perfectly !

    Per Olsen

    ReplyDelete
  53. Anonymous22 December, 2008 18:42

    thank you so much bro~!

    ReplyDelete
  54. Anonymous28 December, 2008 01:10

    you rock man!!! you are the king \m/. i used this and i was able to get my data off my hard drive. i was told that the hard drive is failing. so getting my data was the the only prospect i had and this worked great! Thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  55. Anonymous29 December, 2008 21:29

    thanks a million! I love you!

    ReplyDelete
  56. Anonymous30 January, 2009 19:43

    It worked just like you said. I tried a couple methods only this works. Thank you so much for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  57. Anonymous09 February, 2009 13:09

    Oh man !!! Thank you very much !

    ReplyDelete
  58. Anonymous18 February, 2009 07:14

    Thanks so much for your sharing. Excellent!

    ReplyDelete
  59. Anonymous18 February, 2009 07:45

    when i try to boot from windowx xp cd, it takes me back to the blue screen error page.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Anonymous03 March, 2009 08:58

    Thanks a lot, it worked!

    ReplyDelete
  61. Anonymous03 March, 2009 08:58

    Thanks a lot, it worked!

    ReplyDelete
  62. Anonymous12 March, 2009 11:25

    thnx ... it works!

    ReplyDelete
  63. Anonymous16 March, 2009 23:04

    Add my thanks to a year and a half's worth of comments! Your help really saved my computer.

    ReplyDelete
  64. Anonymous20 March, 2009 18:34

    You are a genius! Thanks so much.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Anonymous25 March, 2009 11:58

    I have XP on a disk but when the computer tries to boot up it wants to know what area I want to partition to load it. How do I get to a command prompt to type in the R or the CHK DSK command. I have tried starting in Safe Mode but the startup continues to Time Out and then restart.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Per Østergaard25 March, 2009 20:07

    It sound to me like you are not booting from an XP CD. When you do so, you have to select R for repair and from there you can do the rest.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Lucas02 April, 2009 06:41

    Worked perfectly, thanks a billion! :)

    ReplyDelete
  68. Anonymous03 April, 2009 22:30

    how does that look once it it typed out then?? i can only go as far as the ''chkdsk c: /r /p'' part.... i just dont know where or when to insert the fixmbr command

    ReplyDelete
  69. kassan13 April, 2009 00:16

    hi, im having the same problem,blue screen with unmountable_boot_volume but when i press r to enter recovery console, it tells me windows cannot find any hard disks installed. what do i do!!

    ReplyDelete
  70. Rand20 April, 2009 07:25

    from the philippines, "maraming salamat po!" =)

    ReplyDelete
  71. Anonymous21 April, 2009 21:30

    thank you so much for such a simple method! worked a treat!

    ReplyDelete
  72. Per Østergaard21 April, 2009 22:02

    It took me some days, before publishing the comment from Rand, as I was not sure whether it was some kind of spam or not. So I set of to translate it and ran into this explanation:

    In Filipino the formal way of expressing gratitude, for example, “Thank you very much.” is
    maraming salamat po. The first word maraming means “many”. It is followed by salamat which in
    English is “thanks” and it is then followed by po. po has no equivalent word in English. Po is used
    in phrases as a sign of respect to older people. The entire phrase is maraming salamat po. The
    informal way of saying this phrase is maraming salamat

    From http://survivalphrases.com/pdfs/SurvivalPhrases_Filipino_S1L01.pdf

    Thanks - and I learned a little Filipino.

    ReplyDelete
  73. KVL25 April, 2009 13:55

    Hi, after I've done all the steps, I don't get the blue death screen anymore but now it shows me a message: "NTDLR is missing". Anyway I goggled and solve this problem as well. Thanks for a step-by-step instruction like this!

    ReplyDelete
  74. sayyid05 May, 2009 09:22

    uhh.u save my laptop

    ReplyDelete
  75. Anonymous11 May, 2009 10:54

    omg!!! I LUV U MAN! U THE BEST!!! SAVED ME !! :d THX ALOT

    ReplyDelete
  76. Anonymous18 May, 2009 00:34

    AWESOME!!! WORKED PERFECTLY THANKS A LOT!!!! God Bless!!

    ReplyDelete
  77. Anonymous19 May, 2009 08:23

    NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! Thanks to the author for what probably works in most cases, but in my case Fixboot decided to write a FAT boot partition onto an NTFS drive without asking for confirmation. It has screwed the partition, it won't boot, chkdsk won't run on it, FixMBR laughs in my face, and it may be adios all my data...

    I would suggest that in certain cases (bad hard disks and other hardware issues, which I suspect is my problem) this is NOT a good solution and will cause more damage.

    I'll post back if I can figure out what the underlying problem is, to avoid others having the same problem.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Unknown29 May, 2009 05:48

    When I run the recovery console it froze with a message "Examining blah blah blah on iastor ...". Just sat there for two hours. The computer has a SATA hard drive and to fix this I had to go to the BIOS settings and change the driver to 'ATA'. Once I had done this the recovery console worked fine ...

    ReplyDelete
  79. Anonymous29 May, 2009 14:40

    I found several solutions online but this is one that worked. Thanks a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  80. sxm10903 June, 2009 06:24

    Dude you are the best, I was kicking shit around as was so pissed looking at the blue screen with no backup of my data. But you just saved me.

    Thanks a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Anonymous04 June, 2009 17:26

    I used this too. It did not recognize the /r /p but I ran the chkdsk then the fixmbr. The fixmbr warned me that it may cause the partition to change and the harddrive to be unreadable so I said "no" to that and exited. It worked anyway. Thank you so much!

    ReplyDelete
  82. Anwar10 June, 2009 09:59

    "You Are the Man", who solved my problem and show me the way to do the things in better way within a very short time. May god bless you dude.
    Thank you so much for your sharing. Excellent!

    ReplyDelete
  83. Anonymous16 June, 2009 22:03

    THANK YOU MAN, YOU HELPED ME A LOT!

    ReplyDelete
  84. ZackN18 June, 2009 08:32

    Thank you sir. I almost ... my pants when this happened to my laptop.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Anonymous29 June, 2009 06:09

    thx dude...problems solved...yahoo.!!!

    ReplyDelete
  86. Anonymous02 July, 2009 02:21

    i need help regarding this problem. i already inserted the cd installation but it doesnt give me an option to open even command prompt. it goes straight to that safe mode blah blah option then after the countdown it restarts again. i appreciate all the help you can give me. TIA

    ReplyDelete
  87. Per Østergaard02 July, 2009 08:00

    If you PC is not set to boot from the CD, that may cause the problem. Most systems have a boot-selection-menu and many systems use F8 to bring that up.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Anonymous10 July, 2009 20:30

    thank u very much .it works

    ReplyDelete
  89. Unknown12 July, 2009 06:33

    I tried running chkdsk c: /r /p but it hung halfway through. Tried it twice. Next time just did a "C:\" at the recover console prompt and got C:\. Then did "dir" ... chugged a while ... then said "An error occurred in directory enumberation."

    Pardon me while I go jump off a cliff.

    ReplyDelete
  90. Kivi21 July, 2009 17:14

    This really saved me!
    Was able to get the system drive on my file server up and running again, atleast enough to copy some important files of it.
    If im lucky i wont even need to reinstall.

    Thanks a lot!

    ReplyDelete
  91. Laurie17 August, 2009 17:27

    When I saw the "Blue Scren of Death" I thought the hard drive was a goner. But your solution worked perfectly and made me look good. Thank you SO much for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  92. Unknown25 August, 2009 20:12

    WORKED GREAT! Thanks!!!

    chkdsk c: /r /p - took about an hour. Percentage done number ran upto 80% then jumped back down to 50% and then up to 100%.

    Back to C: prompt

    fixmbr was instant (big warnings)

    rebooted - Computer came back to life. You helped save a business machine, didn't lose a thing, thanks again!

    ReplyDelete
  93. Anonymous20 September, 2009 03:39

    My machine OS is Windows XP. I did not have a windows recovery disk (my bad!) and did not have the installation cd handy. Had the vista DVD and tried to do what you have outlined.

    chkdsk c: /r/p reported that /p is not a valid parameter. tried chkdks c: /r and that worked fine. took a loooong time but eventually completed succesfully.

    thanks for your post. you're the man!

    --ravi

    ReplyDelete
  94. Anonymous28 September, 2009 22:13

    This is incredible, you indeed solve my problems my GOD will help you amen

    ReplyDelete
  95. Frank D.09 October, 2009 17:54

    hi...


    i run the recovery console, and type the chkdsk /r command but it wont complete successfully. it stops at around 50% and gives me an error of...er, well errors that couldnt be recovered.


    same thing wit chkdsk /p.


    tried the fixboot command after that, said that boot sector was successfully writen but still nothing.

    now it wont even boot to the BSOD. it just says: "non bootable drive."..


    any ideas? its my business pc and reformatting would take me daaaaays behind schedule...:(

    ReplyDelete
  96. Per Østergaard09 October, 2009 21:11

    Sorry, no. Think you have to start all over :(

    ReplyDelete
  97. Anonymous11 October, 2009 04:08

    Mange tak :)

    You are my hero of the day !!!

    Merci from Ben Quebec Canada

    ReplyDelete
  98. Anonymous20 October, 2009 14:26

    thanks so much! I got this message several months ago. I did the most difficult (reloaded the system), but this worked. I didn't have to use FIXMBR. You saved me tremendous amout of time to recovery. highly appreciated!
    slay

    ReplyDelete
  99. Anonymous21 October, 2009 05:36

    it works very good in gateway laptop windows xp.
    tks. very much

    ReplyDelete
  100. veszely21 October, 2009 19:38

    Thanks a lot, it worked like a charm... :-)

    ReplyDelete
  101. Anonymous16 November, 2009 06:41

    bro, i from malaysia and i been facing this problem quite sumtime. usualy i just format. u are the best. thank for your solution.

    have a nice day

    ReplyDelete
  102. Morten16 November, 2009 16:26

    SUPER!!!! Many thanks!!
    Just fixed the gf´s pc!! You are great!!!

    Alt for fedt mange tak!!!

    ReplyDelete
  103. Chazter16 December, 2009 21:10

    FYI to some...the /p is only available if you are in the Recovery Console for Windows 2000 and WindowsXP.

    ReplyDelete
  104. Anonymous31 January, 2010 00:31

    worked for me today, too!

    ReplyDelete
  105. Anonymous01 February, 2010 16:51

    Thanks for sharing the solution - worked for me.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Ibrahim06 March, 2010 13:34

    Everybody...Do not try fixmbr, Just do chkdsk will work fine., Thanks anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Carlos31 March, 2010 23:43

    damn this helped a lot. safe my life. thanks a bunch!!

    ReplyDelete
  108. OZZlE01 April, 2010 17:05

    I got really nervous when fixmbr said my boot table (or something like that) was wrong but replacing it could loose the whole partition, I pressed yes however and it worked!! No missing files :) THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  109. seoracer20 April, 2010 14:12

    Thank you this nice post.

    ReplyDelete
  110. Ala27 May, 2010 06:52

    That was great....thank u very very much u save alot if efforts n alot of data for me...
    Thanx it's working

    ReplyDelete
  111. Sergio12 August, 2010 21:03

    Thank you.
    This saved the day.
    Now I will have to force my father to backup his files, because I am not sure this HD will last long.

    ReplyDelete
  112. Ramon_adordionisio16 September, 2010 07:15

    I start my recovery console but the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error still occur what can i do about it?

    ReplyDelete
  113. Ava20 September, 2010 23:40

    just another satisfied customer
    thanks a bunch

    ReplyDelete
  114. Me25 September, 2010 23:43

    Thanks!! This was driving me NUTS!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  115. Mihrsak30 September, 2010 18:39

    Thanks , it was helpful.
    I fix the problem

    ReplyDelete
  116. trey12 April, 2011 09:28

    hello.. i followed your instructions however when i load my xp installation disc it doesnt give an option to choose r for repair. it just goes straight to installation. help! thanks in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  117. Anonymous24 May, 2011 01:54

    Kudos man -- you saved us big time -- was a critical time for a crash. Have a beer on me.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Anonymous15 June, 2011 04:30

    Thanks, you the man
    Hit during start up
    Chose start with dvd/cd drive
    Hit
    typed chkdsk
    worked like a charm

    Brian

    ReplyDelete
  119. Anonymous20 August, 2011 18:38

    I followed these instructions using the Recovery Console and it did work like a charm!!!

    Run these commands:
    chkdsk c: /r /p
    fixmbr
    exit (to reboot)

    Thank you very much!

    ReplyDelete
  120. Anonymous10 September, 2011 17:09

    This was a lifesaver - thank you!!!

    ReplyDelete
  121. Anonymous19 September, 2011 21:01

    Hi I have the same error message though I have a ques if I repair windows xp or reinstall it will it erase all of my information I have saved on my comp

    ReplyDelete
  122. Anonymous21 November, 2011 18:25

    This is great info. Kudos...Glad that windows XP support is still out there.

    W11zard

    ReplyDelete
  123. Anonymous29 November, 2011 09:17

    Thanks bro thank u very much for such a useful information
    Keep it up

    ReplyDelete
  124. John22 December, 2011 19:24

    You sir, are teh awesome. I had a Sony Vaio rebooting with this error, safe mode crashed at MUP.SYS, normal boot gave me the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME. It also couldn't boot from CD so what I did was mount the drive on my desktop pc via a sata to usb adaptor, run chkdsk i: /f /r /x and after a few hours it fixed all the errors. Put it back in the laptop and it worked! (i: was MY drive letter, obviously you'll have to use another one).
    No fixboot or fixmbr was needed.

    THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  125. Anonymous23 December, 2011 21:25

    Geezzz!! This solved my problem! Good job! :D

    ReplyDelete
  126. Hemanth04 January, 2012 18:59

    Awesome Wonderful and Great Job
    Thank U


    Regards
    Hemanth.T

    ReplyDelete
  127. Anonymous19 January, 2012 03:48

    whew! this really helps. thanks a lot! :)


    ---heart^^PH

    ReplyDelete
  128. Anonymous05 February, 2012 18:50

    I just want to say "THANKS!" for the instructions and especially to "ed" for the blurb about changing the driver to "ATA" in the BIOS. That's what got me into the recovery console and let me run chkdsk. I did not need to use fixboot or fixmbr since after running chkdsk with the /r /p switches my laptop booted to windows OK.
    THANKS AGAIN

    ReplyDelete
  129. File Recovery15 February, 2012 06:51

    This article is indeed very helpful for me, i will surely refer my friends to your site.

    ReplyDelete
  130. ramji_simbhu22 March, 2012 06:06

    Hi.. I am also facing the same issue. I have a doubt.
    I havent backed up any files till now. Doing the steps you mentioned will it erase any of my personal data.. ? FYI, I have all my data in C drive only and D drive is used for system recovery.

    Thanks in Advance !!

    ReplyDelete
  131. Dennis20 April, 2012 14:20

    perfect! thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  132. angelasbaron03 May, 2012 17:02

    WOW! This is years after the original post, but THANK YOU! Seriously it saved my butt! YAY!

    ReplyDelete
  133. angelasbaron03 May, 2012 17:03

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  134. AP21 May, 2012 20:36

    Hello,
    It seems that this might be a great solution, but I have another problem. My CD rom drive does not automatically start up. Is there anything else I can do? Or is my computer just ... done...?

    ReplyDelete
  135. Anonymous28 May, 2012 05:34

    Well, all I can say is I owe you BIG TIME! Daughter's XP Pro laptop packed it in with BSOD.
    "AHHH! DAD I'm screwed! You HAVE to fix IT!"
    Yet again Dad is the hero,,,, Thanks to you!
    You really made a difference today.
    Thanks more than lots!
    AJL,, the Dad
    PS. Ran full backup to WHS server and just in case saved this link to favorites,,, just in case (one must have redundancy).
    Tks again!
    A Dad

    ReplyDelete
  136. Bharath14 June, 2012 08:37

    worked thanks

    ReplyDelete