AAAaaah!!! Blue Screen of Death.

Well,

It's not pretty. My wife's computer is presenting a blue screen with the message UNMOUNABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

I'm unable to boot with Windows CD. I cannot get into safe mode. I am unsure if this is the result of my son playing on the keyboard, or the last automatic update that my wife installed. She's not sure what it was for.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Greg

Sounds like the Hard drive crapped out...

try downloading the drive mfr diag software off their web site..

bios should tell you what kind it is ..maxtor,,western digital...etc... if bios cant read it, you obviously must look at the drive...

boot off floppy then run software....

I'm not a computer guru, so I can't help diagnose your problem, but I've been playing around with various Linux "live CDs" that boot your PC into the Linux OS from a CD. If all else fails, these live CDs can be used to recover data from a crashed Windows hard disk. More info here.

Darklight-

Will look for diag software. I do not have a floppy drive, I have reset to boot first from CD, yet I am unable to continue with widows setup/repair. Just freezes at set up screen.

Zig-

I remember seeing something about Knoppix. May give that a try. Not too concerned about data, I have backups, just want to get her up and running.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

With hope, some of our resident PC gurus will chime in here. When you say you can't boot from the Windows CD, it sounds like the cd drive is not in the boot path. You'll need to get into the BIOS and set the order of boot search. If your machine has a 3.5" floppy (unlikely), it usually is first. The next device should be the CD drive. The final is the hard drive. This way, when there's a bootable floppy or CD in one of the drives, it boots from that instead of the hard drive. When there isn't a disk in one of those drives, it goes to the hard drive for boot. Hope this helps

I am a computer guru btw hehe, I have built and repaired hundreds of pcs, I have worked for Compaq building high end servers.
The windows cd is not finding the hd, almost all factory pcs HAVE the cdrom in the boot order before the HD.

Go into Bios though and verify this is true....hopefully you can dig around in there with out upsetting any settings......
What kind of pc is this btw?

If you can get into the recovery console run chkdsk /r

this may fix your issue...

We need to know the basic machine specs and operating system info also...

WinXP?

try this page to see if it helps...

But normally some kind of disc corruption causes this issue to start with..

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297185

This is a dell 2400 running XP home. F12 at start up allowed me to boot from cd. By putting in Windows cd as boot disk, I get the setup/repair screen. I am then unable to select enter for setup or <R> for repair. It does not recognize keyboard input at this point.

Greg

nethiker,
If you have managed to boot from the CD the chkdisk /r is worth a shot. It will at least ensure that there are no bad bits on the drive but is unlikley to restore the system to a usable state.

I have worked in Microsoft tech support so may be able to give you more info if you can provide the error details.

You should be seeing something like
STOP 0x???????? (0xaaaaaaaa,0xbbbbbbbb,0xcccccccc,0xdddddddd)
UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME

Fill in the ??, a's , b's, c's and d's /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Error message:

***STOP:0x000000ED (0x81B04c30,0xC000009c,0x00000000,0x00000000)

I was able to run diagnostic on the hard drive. It failed the read test with Msg:

Error Code:
0F00:0244
Msg:Block 5099873
Uncorrectable data error or media is write protected.

There were several of these with different Msg:Block numbers.

Thanks guys for your help.

Greg

I'm going to a meeting soon.

Will return later tonight.

Thanks,
Greg

Cool,

Just looking into it, are you using any Norton protection apps? The Pqv2i.sys driver is included with the V2i Protector 2.0 program from Symantec and is known for causing this issue.

A work around will be to use the Recovery Console to disable the V2i Protector 2.0 program, or rename the Pqv2i.sys driver and it normally lives here
%windir%\System32\Drivers

for info on how /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif Try the following MS support articles
310602 How to disable a service or device that prevents Windows from starting
244905 How to disable a service or device that prevents Windows from booting

let me know if this helped

Also,what was the diagnostic app you used?